Ordeal by Innocence: Trailer for the Agatha Christie Classic Coming in August. #book2movie

“Smile Mother! So everyone knows we're happy!’’ 

Except they’re not. Even in the pre-social media age, families took photos, everyone putting on smiles as if they were all blindingly happy. In England, that’s what they call playing happy families. If you’re a fan of British detective shows, you know the phrase. It’s the kind of fake family harmony a detective might notice when interviewing suspects in a murder investigation. 

In Ordeal by Innocence it’s especially clear this is not a happy family and Mother will soon be dead. And by the looks of it, via the hand of someone in her family. Her large and extended family.

Amazon Prime has released the trailer for the original limited series based on Agatha Christie’s novel, set to stream on August 10th. 

“In Ordeal By Innocence, old wounds are reopened for the Argyll family when a man suddenly turns up and claims that the black sheep of the family, Jack Argyll, could not have murdered its tyrannical matriarch — for which he was accused just one year earlier. The family must come to terms with Jack’s innocence and with the fact that one of them may be the real murderer.

Adapted by Sarah Phelps (The Casual Vacancy, The Crimson Field), Ordeal by Innocence features an ensemble cast that includes Bill Nighy (Love Actually), Anthony Boyle (The Lost City of Z), Anna Chancellor (The Hour), Morven Christie (The A Word), Crystal Clarke (Assassin’s Creed), Christian Cooke (The Promise), Alice Eve (Star Trek Into Darkness), Matthew Goode (The Good Wife), Ella Purnell (Sweetbitter), Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark), and Luke Treadaway (Fortitude).

This is the adaptation in which actor Ed Westwick was replaced by Christian Cooke