Agatha Christie Screen Spotlight: Miss Marple Got a Sleek, Moody Makeover in K-Drama Series ‘Ms. Ma, Nemesis’
The Korean series starring Yunjin Kim takes an unconventional approach to adapting Agatha Christie that puts a fresh spin on material that could have become rote.
Whether she’s played by Margaret Rutherford or Angela Lansbury, or even if she’s an anime character, Agatha Christie’s famous amateur detective Miss Marple has a specific aesthetic and demeanor: She’s an elderly woman with a somewhat dowdy fashion sense and a tendency to gently but persistently poke her nose into everyone’s business.
At first glance, the title character of 2018 South Korean series Ms. Ma, Nemesis seems nothing like the traditional presentation of Miss Marple: She’s introduced as an inmate at a prison psychiatric facility, expertly orchestrating a breakout so that she can find the true perpetrator of the crime she was imprisoned for. As played by Yunjin Kim, she’s headstrong and sometimes ruthless, and she’s neither elderly nor dowdy. She’s in her late 40s but could pass for younger, and she looks glamorous and beautiful even while on the run from the law.
Yet as the 32 episodes of Ms. Ma, Nemesis progress, many of the familiar characteristics of Miss Marple emerge. Writer Park Jin-woo adapts elements of five of Christie’s Miss Marple novels, weaving them together into an elaborate narrative that mixes old-fashioned whodunits with heightened soap-opera melodrama. It’s an unconventional approach to adapting Christie that puts a fresh spin on material that could have become rote.
As the title implies, the overarching story draws from Christie’s 1971 novel Nemesis, although it places Ms. Ma in the roles of both the investigator and the suspect. Nine years earlier, she was found in the woods next to her daughter’s dead body, and she was convicted of the murder despite her insistence on her innocence. Her story was so far-fetched that she was deemed mentally ill, but when she discovers new information that convinces her of her sanity, she escapes from prison determined to clear her name and avenge her daughter.
She’s relentlessly hunted by Han Tae-kyu (Jung Woong-in), the detective who first arrested her and who now believes that she may be innocent. He puts his career on the line to track her down, becoming nearly as single-minded and obsessive as she is. She remains one step ahead of him, though, and once she evades her initial pursuers, she takes on the identity of mystery novelist Ma Ji-won, who happens to look exactly like her.
The coincidental doppelganger is a staple of both mystery stories and soap operas, so it fits perfectly with the tone that Ms. Ma, Nemesis is aiming for. As Ma Ji-won, Ms. Ma moves to the quaint small town of Rainbow Village, which is the South Korean equivalent of St. Mary Mead, complete with local busybodies, bumbling provincial cops, and shocking murders. Ms. Ma changes her hairstyle, puts on a pair of glasses, and takes up knitting, and suddenly the Miss Marple connection becomes clear.
While in Rainbow Village, Ms. Ma gets entangled in various local mysteries, all adapted from Christie novels, while she continues her own investigation, and the show intricately fits the different cases together. Each time she solves a crime in Rainbow Village, it also leads her to someone or something relevant to her own case, and of course there’s a larger reason why she picked that town as her hideout in the first place.
Thanks to the amusing supporting cast, the small-scale Rainbow Village storylines are generally more entertaining than the sometimes overwrought series-long mystery, especially when the show digs into Ms. Ma’s angst and guilt. Kim, who’s best known in the U.S. for her role as Korean castaway Sun on Lost, deftly balances Ms. Ma’s righteous fury and playful cleverness, and that slightly arrogant sense of mischief is what connects her most clearly to other versions of Miss Marple.
“Murders don’t happen in this village!” exclaims one of the town gossips, right before getting murdered herself, but of course Ms. Ma’s arrival turns Rainbow Village into a hotbed of deadly intrigue. In that way, she’s exactly like every other Miss Marple, cheerfully bringing murder everywhere she goes.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He’s the former film editor of Las Vegas Weekly and the former TV comedies guide for About.com. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for Vulture, IndieWire, CBR, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.