BBC originally turned down chance to make Anthony Horowitz series Magpie Murders

A year after first debuting on BritBox, the murder mystery has made its way to BBC One, beginning with episode 1 tonight and the entire six-episode season on BBC iPlayer.

While it felt meant to be that Magpie Murders would eventually land on the BBC, boasting a cast among the likes of Lesley Manville, Tim McMullan and Conleth Hill, at the very start, it seemed as though it might not be possible.

When asked by Metro.co.uk what it means for the show to have found its new home, the Alex Rider author said: ‘It means a lot to me, I’ll be honest with you.

‘I always thought of it when I wrote it as being a perfect show for the BBC. I’m not quite sure why, but it has so many of the values of shows… you know of a classic detective series yet with something different happening, a twist to it, old fashioned and new.

‘I just always thought to myself for some reason that it was perfect weekend, Saturday/Sunday viewing on BBC, and I was very disappointed when some years ago, they decided not to develop it with me. But here we are – all’s well that ends well.’

Recalling why it was that the BBC said no to it in the first place, he shared: ‘It’s always very difficult to to understand why executives say no to a project, particularly when you’re actually sitting on it some years later, and it’s had the success it’s had and the popularity it’s had and it spawned a sequel. It’s now where it always should have been.’

At the time, the BBC felt that the book was ‘too complicated to adapt’, Anthony recollected, that ‘it just couldn’t be done’.

He acknowledged that it was a very difficult book to adapt, given it is a story within a story with plenty of twists and turns.

After several rewrites, Anthony finally found the key formula for the TV adaptation, with pivotal guidance from his wife Jill Green, who he described as being ‘so clever’ when it comes to scriptwriting.

‘The problem was that it had to be both very complicated – because the book is full of clues and twists and turns and suspects and red herrings – but at the same time, it had to be something that an audience can follow very easily,’ he outlined.

‘You can’t have your audience getting lost after 20 minutes or they’ll turn off. So it was difficult to get it right but in the end I did and here it is.’

The creation of the Magpie Murders TV show was a ‘joy’ to make, Anthony said, emphasising that it’s ‘very rare that you get the perfect shoot, where everything goes right. And this is one of those very, very rare occasions’.

Showering the cast and director Peter Cattaneo with praise, the acclaimed author teased that while Magpie Murders is a ‘twisty’ murder mystery, it is also ‘something more’, if anyone isn’t familiar yet with the story.

‘It is also a contemplation about the nature of whodunnit, why we read them. It’s a contemplation about the nature of murder. Why is a murder in a street something that is disgusting and unpleasant, whereas a murder in a book is entertainment? At what stage does murder become neutralised?’ he explained.

‘Why do we read murder mysteries? What is the pleasure of all of a whodunnit? Why is Agatha Christie still the most popular writer in the world, certainly in terms of book sales? So it is both an examination of the world of whodunnit and it is, I hope, a pretty much unguessable whodunnit in its own right.’

Magpie Murders will be available to watch tonight at 9.15pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

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