Season 1 • Episode 4
LatestBickleigh finds himself on trial for murder — which has an unexpected conclusion.
Malice Aforethought is a four-part 1979 BBC Two miniseries by Philip Mackie, adapted from Anthony Berkeley Cox's (pen name Francis Iles) 1931 noir novel of the same name. For ten years, Julia Bickleigh has despised and bullied her husband. For ten years Dr Bickleigh has dreamed of romance ... and escape.
Acting
Hywel Bennett's worm-turns-serpent transformation
Writing
Mackie's razor-sharp adaptation of Iles' inverted mystery
Creator
Philip Mackie
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Francis Iles invented the 'inverted detective story'—we know whodunit from page one, the puzzle is whether they'll get away with it. This 1979 adaptation arrived during British television's golden age of literary crime.
The 1920s setting lets Edmund weaponize medical respectability—his arsenic prescriptions go unquestioned because doctors simply weren't suspected. Class anxiety drips from every scene.
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