Moonflower Murders star Lesley Manville says series is "quite unexpected"
Manville teases what fans can expect in the new season of the drama.
It's certainly the season for the kind of dramas we're ready to hunker down with on these longer, colder nights – so it's a good thing that Moonflower Murders is landing on our screens this week.
The second season to Magpie Murders, the new instalment is an adaptation of the 2020 mystery novel of the same name by British author Anthony Horowitz.
Well, teasing what's to come in Moonflower Murders, leading actress Lesley Manville said: "What's coming up in Moonflower is quite unexpected, certainly for Susan. A couple, the Trehernes, a mother and father of two daughters, come to the hotel in Crete because they know Susan was the publisher of the Atticus Pünd books.
"Their daughter has gone missing and also they own a big plush hotel. They come to see Susan in Crete because not only has their daughter disappeared, but eight years prior on her wedding day, a murder took place in their hotel. A man was found dead.
"Before their daughter disappeared, she read Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, which is one of the novels that Alan Conway wrote, and she knows something about the murder that happened eight years ago that's made her disappear."
Manville continued: "Although obviously Susan is not a detective, nobody knew Alan Conway's books and the Atticus Pünd series of books like her. So they come to her and say, 'Would you come? We'll pay you £10,000 if you'll come to the UK and try and help us with your unique knowledge of the novel,' to help decipher what their daughter could read into the novel that made her realise that the wrong person had been put in prison for the murder eight years ago.
"And that's something else that's made her disappear. And I mean, Susan says, 'Look, we need the money.' And they do need the money, but really Susan's just kind of going, 'Ooh, yes, I can go back to London. I can dive into the Atticus Pünd books again.' So it's kind of too tempting a proposition for her to say no to."
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Manville reprises her leading role as editor-turned-sleuth Susan Ryeland, while Timothy McMullan also returns as fictional detective Atticus Pünd.
They return to the main cast along with Alexandros Logothetis, Daniel Mays, Claire Rushbrook, Conleth Hill, Matthew Beard and Sanjeev Kohli.
New cast members joining for Moonflower Murders also include Mark Gatiss, Rosalie Craig, Pippa Bennett-Warner and Adrian Rawlins.
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The synopsis for the season says: "[Susan's] idyll is disturbed by the shadow of a murder committed at a British country hotel eight years ago. Alan Conway visited the hotel and wrote a novel based on what happened there.
"Cecily Treherne, the young woman who helps run the hotel, read the book and believed the wrong man had been arrested. Now she has disappeared.
"Can Susan uncover the secret hidden in the book and find Cecily before it is too late?"
Moonflower Murders kicks off with a double bill at 9:15pm and 10:20pm on Saturday 16th November on BBC One.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
