Agatha Christie’s Poirot (My Rating 5)

Watching can get you through the winter evenings or those lazy afternoons.

¹For decades, watching David Suchet’s version of Agatha Christie’s Poirot has been the equivalent of “comfort food TV” for me. Between 1920 and 1975, Christie wrote 33 Poirot novels, two plays and 51 short stories. (Along the way, Christie grew to dislike her creation but kept writing him.) Although according to Wikipedia, 27 actors have played the role – including Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, Peter Ustinov and, more recently, Kenneth Branagh – Suchet’s TV version is as definitive for me as Jeremy Brett’s is for Sherlock Holmes. He gets the diminutive little Belgian’s fussiness and mustache tending perfectly. Suchet was recruited for the role without knowing much about it but ended up doing 70 episodes from 1989 to 2013 (apparently including all the Poirot novels and short stories) for the British ITV network. In the U.S. they appeared on PBS where I began watching them. In recent months, I shyly admit, I rewatched the entire series on BritBox.

Only lately have I read, and for this review, one of the Poirot books: the first, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (a downloadable copy here). It introduces Poirot with Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp. The TV version follows the book quite closely. Poirot first appears as a former Belgian police detective now a World War One refugee in England where he meets Hastings, who becomes his “Watson.” In the early episodes, Poirot works from his home/office in an appropriately Art Deco apartment building in London. He is assisted by Hastings and a very efficient and loyal secretary, Miss Lemon. He often helps – and sometimes gets grudging help from – Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector Japp. In the later stories – including Murder on the Orient Express – Poirot works alone. Towards the end of the series he sometimes gets drawn into mysteries by Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer who supposedly stands in for Christie and who, like her, comes to dislike her fictional detective.

A rather rotund and fastidious little man, Poirot solves his crimes through using his “little grey cells” and his ability to pick up on clues others miss. He likes to reveal his solution to the crime by collecting the various suspects, revealing dirty little secrets about them and then laying out how the actual killer did the crime and why. This built on the model of observant detection staked out by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes but added the big reveal that became part of the trope used by many others afterwards.

ITV must have spent considerable money recreating the classic 1930s settings of the stories. They provide much of the pleasure in watching Poirot. I especially liked the many appearances of steam-driven trains and classic cars. Hastings likes fast cars and Poirot often can be seen squirming in the open-air roadsters the Captain took speeding down country lanes.

Hugh Fraser plays Hastings and offers an often guilty pleasure watching him jump quickly to the wrong conclusions. But he is a loyal friend and Fraser does him justice. In all, watching Suchet’s Poirot can help you get through the cold winter evenings or those lazy afternoons when you’re at loose ends.

https://www.britbox.com/us/show/Agatha_Christies_Poirot_p04m8lr8

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