Follow-up to my 2023-01-29 diary post on Hercule Poirot.
From reading Poirot’s Wikipedia page, I discovered that the stories do document that he is Catholic, and a few nods are made to it in a few of the episodes in the early years.
I was also pleased, on watching David Suchet’s “Being Poirot” that he also highlighted the end of the Murder on the Orient Express, which I found so moving.
I’ve been icing my ankle in the evenings after Liz goes to bed, so I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up on the Poirot episodes via Britbox. I’m not watching them all, but there are a few – “Chocolate Box” is one – that are nicely done, even if they destroy certain elements of the original story. I’m surprised at how many of these old episodes I remember from their first runs.
Seeing them in a batch like this, Christie’s devices become noticeable: an older character is revealed to be the unknown parent of a younger character, the murder always happens earlier than the timeline suggests.
It is fun to see the bits of business inserted for the actors to do to flesh out their characters. My favorite bit: Hastings is washing dishes, Poirot is drying them. As they speculate about the case, Hastings absent-mindedly hands over a washed saucer to Poirot, who examines it, and passes it back to Hastings for further cleaning. The same saucer is washed and passed back through the entire scene and this absolutely delighted me.
It’s also fun to see young actors like Christopher Eccleston and Damien Lewis in their very young and slim incarnations.
I’m working my way through the seasons, watching the few stories that really interest me, and then finishing with Curtain, which I’ve never read nor seen.
