[Televisionary]

Julia McKenzie's intrepid armchair detective Miss Jane Marple returns to Masterpiece Mystery this Sunday evening with the first of two brand-new installments of Marple that are bound to delight connoisseurs of crime. The two spellbinding installments, "The Mystery of Chimneys" and "The Blue Geranium" follow last month's "The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side," which kicked off a new collection of Six By Agatha , Masterpiece Mystery 's pod of Agatha Christie-based programming that includes three installments of Marple and three of Poirot , including an adaptation of Christie's classic potboiler, "Murder on the Orient Express." Here, McKenzie returns as Miss Marple, the elderly spinster whose kindly exterior belies the rapier wit of a first rate detective... and who finds herself often crossing paths with murder itself, whether it be in amid the hedgerows of a postcard-perfect English village or in the faded ballroom of an ornate

The sunshine might be more intense than ever this summer, but it's also the perfect time to curl up with a good mystery, or four in this case. This weekend, PBS' Masterpiece Mystery launches the first of four fantastic new Miss Marple feature-length mysteries, based on the spinster detective character created by Agatha Christie. Stepping into the role for the first time is the superlative Julia McKenzie ( Cranford ), who replaces Geraldine McEwan as the titular sleuth following McEwan's retirement after the third season of Marple , which airs in the UK on ITV. McKenzie is pitch perfect as the perspicacious Jane Marple; she might look like an elderly spinster but her tweed suits and constant knitting belie the keen mind of a true detective in every sense of the word. The four installments presented here--"A Pocket Full of Rye," "Murder is Easy," "They Do It With Mirrors," and "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?"--might seem like tea cozy