Lesley Manville in MASTERPIECE: MOONFLOWER MURDERS | ©2024 PBS/ Eleventh Hour Films

The six-episode MOONFLOWER MURDERS premieres on PBS MASTERPIECE on Sunday, September 15. This is a sequel to 2022’s series MAGPIE MURDERS. Both are adapted from bestselling mystery novels of the same titles by Anthony Horowitz, who also wrote all the teleplays, and serves as one of the series’ executive producers.

In MAGPIE MURDERS, present-day London book editor Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville, Oscar-nominated for her performance in 2017’s PHANTOM THREAD) searched the unpublished manuscript of one of her authors, Alan Conway (Conleth Hill of GAME OF THRONES), for clues to his murder. At the same time, we saw the story of Alan’s novel unfold, with world-famous sleuth Atticus Pünd (Tim McMullan) trying to solve several killings in a small English village in the 1950s. The twist is that Atticus began to appear to Susan in her imagination.

MOONFLOWER MURDERS finds Susan retired from both editing and amateur detective work. She is instead helping her boyfriend Andreas (Alexandros Logothetis) run a rather chaotic seaside Greek hotel. However, the parents of a young woman who has disappeared in England approach Susan for help. Alan had written about the parents’ hotel, and the young woman’s wedding, in disguised terms in another of his Atticus Pünd novels. Susan, who was the novel’s editor, quickly realizes the book is tied to an eight-year-old murder, and can’t refuse the request. Once again, we also see Atticus’s related case, and once again, Susan’s mind conjures him as a sounding board.

Horowitz has created and produced numerous other television series, including the highly-lauded FOYLE’S WAR. He has several lines of best-selling mysteries, including the Hawthorne and Horowitz novels for mass readership (in which Horowitz writes about a fictional version of himself teaming up with an ex-homicide detective), and the YA ALEX RIDER novels, which had a TV adaptation that ran for three seasons.

When PBS has its days at the summer Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour in Pasadena, California, Horowitz sits down to talk about MOONFLOWER MURDERS.

As the novels precede the series, MAGPIE MURDERS was published in 2016 and released on television in 2022; MOONFLOWER MURDERS was published in 2020, before the MAGPIE MURDERS series was made. So, had Horowitz already begun writing the teleplays for MAGPIE while writing the MOONFLOWER novel?

“My memory is that I had always assumed that MAGPIE MURDERS was going to be a one-off novel. Jill Green, [who is] my producer and my wife, loved the book, and wanted to turn it into a TV series. And I realized that, for her to be able to raise the finance to make MAGPIE MURDERS, a second book would make life an awful lot easier.

“So, the motive to start writing MOONFLOWER MURDERS was to help Jill by saying there would definitely be a sequel to MAGPIE MURDERS, were it a success, because companies like PBS, BBC, Britbox, the original platform for it, were unlikely just to do a show if it was a one-off. They needed to have a second book and a feeling there could be a series. So, I began writing MOONFLOWER MURDERS before we began making MAGPIE MURDERS, and before I began to adapt MAGPIE MURDERS, the book sort of formed itself. And I then started writing the script to MAGPIE.”

Having written two novels in the series didn’t greatly simplify scripting the original MAGPIE MURDERS.

“MAGPIE was extremely difficult to write for a series. The star of the show, Susan Ryeland, is in Pages 1 and 2 of the first book, and then disappears until about page 250. Which, if you translate that to television, means that you have your star, Lesley Manville, on the screen for one minute, and then she doesn’t reappear for three episodes. Jill said, ‘You cannot do it that way. You have got to do it through Lesley Manville. She’s got to be in it from the start.’ Which unlocked the entire series.”

The title of MOONFLOWER MURDERS refers to a wing of the hotel where the first murder is committed. Horowitz explains, “I’m into this alliteration, I don’t quite know why, for this series. It just seems to work. When you’re writing a series of books, there’s got to be something in the title that tells people that it is part of the series, so they immediately know that, and the double ‘M’ seems to be doing it for me.

Lesley Manville in MASTERPIECE: MOONFLOWER MURDERS | ©2024 PBS/ Eleventh Hour Films

“Curiously, the original title was MOONFISH MURDERS. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you will find there is such a thing as a moonfish. And I did quite like the look of it. It’s a very strange-looking fish. But then ‘Moonflower’ came into my head, because it’s got a romantic quality about it, and there is a love story at the heart of MOONFLOWER MURDERS, although quite a grisly one, but the idea that these flowers, which only open up at night, when the moon comes out, there was something about that I just liked and felt fitted a murder mystery rather well. So, the fish disappeared.”

All of Horowitz’s crime fiction has back story and often multiple time frames, but in MOONFLOWER MURDERS, he has to juggle not only present reality and 1950s-set fiction, but also flashbacks to the real world eight years before Susan is asked to look into the current disappearance.

Horowitz relates, “The trick of these things is, if an audience watches a show and they are confused – they don’t know where they are or when they are or who this is or what exactly is happening – they will turn off. It is as simple as that. Because you don’t have the facility, like you have with a novel, which I often do, which is, if you’re reading it on Kindle, you can actually put your finger on the name of the character, and it’ll give you a quick character breakdown and who they are, and you’ll remember. Or if you’re reading a book, you can just go back a few pages and search for the name, and say, ‘Oh, yes, of course, I remember what happened.’

“So, I have to make it absolutely clear who everybody is and where we are within the story. And it was very difficult to construct, and to execute, to make it on the page so that you always knew. But it is my first thought. I always say it’s like a Swiss watch. Take a watch and open it up and look inside it. If you pull it to pieces, you will never get it back together again. It’s going to be lots of bits and pieces and springs and cogs and wheels and diamonds and quartz, and whatever else is inside a watch. But look at a watch, and you can tell the time instantly. That’s how my stories need to work.”

Horowitz elaborates, “These works are sort of Russian [nesting] dolls. You’ve got the life of Atticus Pünd and [his assistant] Madeline Cain [played by Pippa Bennett-Warner] and the murders, which is the very inner Russian doll. But that’s actually been invented by Alan Conway, who is an unpleasant writer, who uses people in a particularly negative way, and has clashes with his editor, Susan Ryeland.

“He’s dead by the time the second season starts; he’s still very much a part of the story. And therefore, it makes sense that there should be a third Russian doll on the outside, which is me. I am the writer who creates everything, and therefore all of those characters inhabit my world, which is why, for example, Susan has a flat in Crouch End – that’s where I used to live – it’s why she goes to Crete, which is where I spend a lot of my time, and the hotel has come out of my childhood.

“The books are all inspired by places I’ve been to. MOONFLOWER MURDERS takes place in a fictional village, Tawleigh, Devonshire, but it’s actually based on Stone, Appledore [in Kent], where I spent many happy years as a child.”

What about the hotel that Susan and Andreas are trying to run in Crete? “It was sort of knowing Greek hotels, and imagining what can go wrong, and being careful not to make it too FAWLTY TOWERS. I didn’t want to go down the comedy hotel route, where everything is [catastrophic].

“I think that what is great about those early scenes is that Susan Ryeland really is finding it very difficult to cope with all this noise and confusion and plumbers, and just the general way that life seems to be combative. She’s not relaxing into it, everything is going wrong around her. So, I wanted it to be real. It is, of course, also quite colorful. Andreas and a young waiter who’s always rushing around, rather helplessly trying to get things right, are, by their natures, slightly humorous, but it isn’t fake laughs.”

Horowitz worked with story editors on both MAGPIE MURDERS and MOONFLOWER MURDERS. “The scripts are extremely complicated in terms of time, timeframes, and just clues and details. When I write these things, I often think of myself as a telephone engineer with two huge, fat cables, one in the right hand, one in the left hand, and out of each cable will come fifty or sixty multicolored wires. And [the story editor’s] job is to make sure that the wires on the left will fit the wires on the right. That’s how these stories work.

MASTERPIECE: MOONFLOWER MURDERS key art | ©2024 PBS/ Eleventh Hour Films

“A script editor is there to remind me that all the wires have actually been put into their place and have got the right colors. I can’t manage without one. Jill [has sometimes done] did that job, but script editors Matthew, Tim [Morris], Grace – these are the people who have kept my scripts sane.”

Peter Cattaneo directed the entirety of MAGPIE MURDERS but, Horowitz says, “There wasn’t a question of asking him [to direct MOONFLOWER MURDERS], because he had already told us he had a film that he was going to do immediately after he finished MAGPIE MURDERS, so he was never under consideration for it. I thought he did a fantastic, phenomenal job on Season 1.”

Rebecca Gatward directed all the episodes of MOONFLOWER MURDERS. “I was very, very happy with her work,” Horowitz enthuses, “and if we do a Season 3, she would be without any question the first person I would mention.” He’s especially pleased with Gatward’s handling of the season finale. “When you get to Episode 6, you will see that there have been a few camera tricks which I’m quite proud of.”

Returning to the role of Susan Ryeland, did Manville express any thoughts on what she would or wouldn’t like to do this time around?

“Lesley had a wonderful time in Greece, I think it’s fair to say. I don’t like to speak for her, or even to repeat conversations with her. I think that she enjoys the character. She enjoys the detective work and working things out. The wrap at the end of MOONFLOWER MURDERS is a master class in acting. She absolutely holds the room.

“When you get to the end of the show, and she actually does do her gathering in the library, which incidentally is something her character doesn’t like in these books, which is when you get all the suspects together and then go around the room, saying, ‘It could have been you, it could have been you, it was actually you.’ But she does it with such elan that it’s a joy to watch. So, I think, moving forward from there, I will continue to give her that sort of scene.

“But I know what she really loves also are the emotional scenes, the human scenes. This is a story about a woman who has reached a crossroads in her life. Does she stay in Greece, where she’s uncomfortable and unhappy, with her partner, and things are going wrong? Does she go back to the career that makes her happiest? And it’s a choice that everybody in life sometimes has to face. I think that’s what she enjoys doing most.”

Besides Manville, McMullan, Hill, and Logothetis, Daniel Mays returns in his dual role of combative contemporary police detective Locke and obliging 1950s fictional police detective Chubb.

“Chubb and Locke go together, obviously, just for their names, like chalk and cheese,” Horowitz relates. “They’re inseparable. Getting Daniel Mays back a second time was fantastic. He added so much to MAGPIE MURDERS. He had it exactly right. Chubb is so jocular; Locke is so hard-edged and difficult. In this season, Locke gives Susan a very, very hard time, because he is investigating.

“And of course, that is what this whole show is about. Locke is investigating the disappearance of a young woman, who has possibly been murdered, and it could be a family tragedy, and he doesn’t like the fact that Susan is on the ground, talking about 1950s cozy crime murder. And it’s about that clash. Locke is not the easiest of men, but he’s quite a decent one, and he does come from a certain truth about the nature of modern crime. So, I think he is superb in this season, particularly when he is up against Leslie [as] Susan.”

Horowitz is also excited about new-this-season cast additions Warner-Bennett and Mark Gatiss. “I am particularly thrilled with Pippa’s performance as Madeline, which is really special, and puts the whole piece in a different place.”

As for Gatiss, “He’s a hero of mine. If you’d seen THE MOTIVE AND THE CUE [the play by Jack Thorne], for which Mark won many awards, and knew his history as both a writer and as an actor, the day he said he was going to do it was one of the happiest days of my writing career, because you just don’t expect an actor of that caliber to take a part that is, or was, so small. It became much bigger once he said he was going to do it. He’s an extremely pleasant and charming man, the sort of star that you love to meet, because he’s not a star, he’s just a very regular guy.”

We see magpies on a tree branch in MOONFLOWER MURDERS, paying homage to MAGPIE MURDERS. “I put one shot of the magpies in, because they’d been so wonderful in the first season. They really were a game. We had one magpie in Episode 1, then two, then three, then four, and finally seven at the end.

“I thought I’d bring them back just once [in MOONFLOWER] for a reminder that they were still watching, and hoping perhaps that they could bring me a little bit of their joy and their good spirit to the second season. I think if I make the third one, I will leave the magpies out. But there will be always references across the books, because that’s how it all works.”

In an earlier interview, Horowitz had said that a third Susan Ryeland book/television series would probably not include Atticus Pünd, but he’s changed his mind about that.

“There are in fact four Susan Ryeland novels in my head. The third one [now titled MARBLE HALL MURDERS] originally was going to be called MILE END MURDERS – there’s the ‘M’ once again popping up – that was going to be set entirely in twenty-first-century London, with Susan editing a book about a female senior police officer. She’s brought in to edit this book, and discovers that everything that this police officer has said is a lie. That book is sort of in the back of my head as possible Number 4, and it doesn’t have Atticus Pünd in it.

“However, when I began to write the third novel in the sequence, it just somehow felt wrong not to have Atticus in it. It diminished Susan in a strange way. He’s so much a part of her, and I so love what Tim has done with it, and of course, in the back of my head, I’m saying to myself, ‘If we’re going to turn this into television, audiences love Tim McMullan. They love his work, they love the character, and to do it without him would be very disappointing.’ As I sit here speaking to you, I don’t even know if we’re going to make it, but if we do make it, I think we have to make it with Tim.”

There can never be scenes between Atticus and his creator Alan, however. “It’s not possible, because Atticus Pünd exists entirely in Susan’s imagination. She has created this figure to a certain extent.

“I think that’s one of the cleverest things about the way Rebecca has directed it, and the way that [Manville and McMullan] perform it, is that he is part of her consciousness. He isn’t a ghost or an interdimensional space traveler, he’s only there for her. And I don’t think in the twenty-first century he talks to anybody else, nor could he. I think that would turn him into something different.”

Horowitz notes that someone asked actor McMullan if Atticus changes during the show. “Well, he does change, but that’s largely down to external things, like having Madeline as a sidekick, instead of having Matthew Beard as the rather dimwitted Fraser in the first season. So, things do change. Cases change, and the stakes are higher, but one of the things about Atticus Pünd is that he is what Susan makes him.”

What Horowitz would like to learn once MOONFLOWER MURDERS has aired is, “First of all, what I always want to know is if people have enjoyed it, and if they’ve guessed the ending. I would say that it has a darker heart than the first one, and yet conversely, it seems to be more on the edge of comedy. The people who enjoyed MAGPIE MURDERS will hopefully enjoy MOONFLOWER as much, but for different reasons.”

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Article:  MASTERPIECE: MOONFLOWER MURDERS: Creator on writer Anthony Horowitz on new PBS mystery series based on his bestselling novel – Exclusive Interview 

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