RA FRIDAY - MALICE AFORETHOUGHT

Welcome to 2010! New Year,  new weekly event! What are you saying? RA on my blog on Friday is nothing new ? Ok, it is a not-completely-new weekly event. What am I blathering? I'll try to explain. Since this first Friday on, all Fridays I'll be posting about my favourite actor,  Mr Richard Armitage from Leicester -  as usual  - but  my "new" weekly event will be titled RA FRIDAY and not RA PHOTO FRIDAY.

 So? What is different? No more photos of him in my posts?!? Don't worry, that's not my intention... I just wanted to enlarge my perspective and write posts about his past work or  future plans and projects, without being limited by the word "photo".

Now, what you'll find is  this event,  RA - FRIDAY,  each week on my blog with something about him.  There are still things he worked in I haven't seen and want to see, I haven't listen and want to listen to,  or future plans I can't wait for ... I know there are plenty of sites dedicated to him but this will be my personal little corner dedicated to this greatly - talented British actor. I'll wait for your comments, contribution and suggestions each Friday of course but ,if you are not interested, forget my blog on Friday and you'll be welcome any other day!

I'd like to start with one his less known works I've recently received as a gift by "my little fairy" and have  just watched : MALICE AFORETHOUGHT. I've found very little online about it and very few caps also... but I'm not a good hunter, maybe there are many and I didn't find them. Anyhow,  I've made some stills myself and I'll add them to this post.

Let's start saying that Mr Armitage's  look in this murder  mystery set in the 1920s is this

This is the only photo I've picked from another site, Annette's precious richardarmitageonline , where I've also found some interesting  news about this drama.

Malice Aforethought was first broadcast in Britain in two 90-minute episodes on ITV1, on the 10th and 11th  April 2005. It had previously been shown in America on PBS on April 3rd and 10th 2005.

It is an adaptation of  Francis Iles' 1931 novel of the same name. It's set in an unnamed picturesque English village - and tells the story of the local doctor, Edmund Bickleigh  (Ben Miller). Married to a cold domineering older woman, Bickleigh finds solace in the arms of the ladies of the village, in particular, Ivy Ridgeway and the terribly fascinating newcomer,  Madeleine Cranmere. When Madeleine refuses to be his mistress, wanting marriage instead, he decides the best thing to do is to poison his wife. But one murder is never enough...

Richard Armitage plays Bill Chatford, a solicitor who is Ivy's new husband. Returning from honeymoon, he realises that Ivy  had been Bickleigh's mistress. He becomes suspicious of the doctor's role in his wife's death and starts asking around and menacing the doctor. Thanks to a confession from Madeleine Cranmere he manages to get,  he starts understanding the doctor's plot ...

Richard Armitage himself described Chatford as "a misogynistic cad". I didn't find him so terrible, I  just saw in this character glimples of  Gisborne's aggressive temper. Bill  is very polite, elegant and smart  but, in some scenes, Richard's acting foreshadows his character in BBC Robin Hood. The use of his voice, his sneer, his aggressiveness (especially in the scene when Bill discovers his just married wife had been the doctor's mistress, see photos below) in this 2005 work  are  anticipations of what we were going to see in the 3 different series of RH.

Although the novel and the TV adaptation are in the murder mystery genre, there's actually no mystery about who the murderer is. Iles' novel was one of the first to reveal the murderer right at the start. It begins:

"It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter."

So,the fun is in watching Bickleigh trying to get away with the murder.

I liked watching this two-episode miniseries I so wanted to see for one reason only. Instead  I can say I liked it not only for that  certain fascinating presence: it is good period drama, good murder mystery, good sexy dark comedy with brilliant performances given by cast in general. Eccentric characters, beautiful locations and costumes.

If I have to find a flaw  in this enjoyable TV movie ... While watching ... I just kept wondering how  it was possible that all femal characters got a crush on that small insignificant doctor Bickleigh (sorry Mr Miller!) when they had such an elegant handsome  solicitor around ...Unbelievable! He had a bad temper, it's true, but what about the treacherous doctor... Unbelievable!