The made-for-television remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Lady Vanishes airs this coming Sunday, March 17th, 2013 on BBC One. A co-production of BBC and PBS's Masterpiece, it will (eventually) air in the US, though we don't have a date (yet).
Beautiful and wealthy young socialite Iris Carr (Tuppence Middleton) is used to being at the heart of her social group but when her friends' raucous behavior escalates while on holiday in the Balkans she resolves to seek out some tranquillity and travel home alone.
But her expectations of peace are short-lived when at the railway station Iris wavers in the scorching heat and constant jostle of passengers, fainting suddenly on the platform. She wakes in time to be rushed on to the train but with a pounding head and a feeling of being almost in a dream.
While in this malaise she is comforted by an older English lady called Miss Froy (Selina Cadell), whose tweed suit and bookish looks hide a surprisingly jovial and adventurous spirit. She talks at length about her employer and her desperation to return home to her family but when Iris falls asleep she awakes to find Miss Froy vanished and her fellow passengers denying she ever existed.
With only the friendship of handsome English traveller Max Hare (Tom Hughes) for support, Iris maintains her conviction that Miss Froy has somehow been abducted. But who would want to snatch a seemingly harmless English woman and where would she be hiding?
As fellow passengers refute Iris's story and figures emerge who will disprove Miss Froy's existence, Iris's conviction appears increasingly to be madness. With only Max to help her Iris will have to rely on a strength of character she never knew she had to battle doubt and overcome danger as she strives to solve the mystery of why the lady vanished.
The Lady Vanishes is based on the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel White.
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The Wheel Spins
Ethel White
The protagonist of the story is Iris Carr, who suffers a blackout just before boarding a train that is traveling across Europe to London. On board the train, the still-woozy Iris befriends a certain Mrs. Froy, a fellow Englishwoman who is perhaps a bit eccentric but seems to be for the most part agreeable and benign. Mrs. Froy is the "vanishing lady" of Hitchcock's title, and it is Mrs. Froy who mysteriously disappears while Iris is napping. Her inexplicable departure throws Iris into a mind-bending mystery that will make her alternately question her sanity and the designs of the people around her. When Iris asks about Mrs. Froy, everyone on board the train denies ever having seen the old woman. Although Iris could perhaps be swayed due to the knock on her head that Mrs. Froy was merely a vivid hallucination, a few stray details suggest that something more sinister is happening, and Iris resolves to get to the bottom of the mystery.
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