Well, we wrap up this series four-part adaptation of Christie’s somber Sleeping Murder with a serious, sad, but hopeful episode. The episode has laid the groundwork for Mabel reconnecting with her estranged parents and it actually follows through with that in a nice way. In fact, this episode wraps up the murder mystery before the first commercial break, right about halfway through the episode. It spends the remaining ten minutes musing on the tragedy of the murder, the grief of the survivors and the overall sadness of the story and then using that to springboard both Mabel and our main guest character into moments of hopeful connection with their own families. Man, that’s really surprising and cool and great. I love that the show is now taking these kinds of risks and they’re paying off, at least for me. This is absolutely the best adaptation of the show’s run so far and it’s going to have to go really far to beat it in the remaining . . . wow, just six episodes left. We’ll see, but I suspect Sleeping Murder is going to be this show’s crowning achievement. 4 stars.
tl;dr – shows spends a surprising amount of time on character development, wrapping up the mystery quickly and neatly; definitely the best adaptation of the series so far. 4 stars.
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