The meaning of the ‘7 1 22’ riddle is also slightly different, given that there’s now no way this could read as a date in the year 1922.Īnother change (for me at least) was that Anne is much, much more endearing here than in the novel, although I’m really at a loss to explain why. This removes any of the ambiguity from the opening incident – here, it very much is an accident. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the way that, even given the late-1980s setting, the story is left almost totally intact, the biggest change being that Anne starts her adventure having already embarked on her travels and that the affair that sparks off her amateur sleuthing is a car accident rather than death-by-tube.

But I was very pleasantly surprised by this film, which turned out to be delightful – not least in the inventive ways it remained faithful to the story and spirit of the source material. Just… why would you do that? Why? To be honest, I’m still not sure. The novel is so very much a product of 1920s Britain that I just didn’t feel any desire to watch a version of the story updated in this way. Its characters’ nationalities (the good guys at any rate) have been pointlessly transformed from British to American and the action transposed to the late 1980s. I must admit, I’d never had any inclination to seek out this adaptation of the novel before now. Fortunately, it popped up on ITV over Christmas, so I was able to watch it after all. I didn’t think I’d be able to review this film as part of my trawl, due to its being very hard to come by on DVD and (as far as I can see) also unavailable on a certain popular video-streaming site. Stephanie Zimbalist, Edward Woodward, Rue McClanahan, Tony Rnadall

The man in the brown suit