AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT: COMPLETE CASE FILES, Blu-ray (ITV, A&E, RLJ, 1989-2003) ACORN MEDIA
In preparation for the role, Suchet
immersed himself in all the Christie novels, taking to heart Poirot’s quirks as
“the sort of man who takes it upon himself to straighten your tie…but also
knows how to make a woman feel special.” Hercule Poirot is hardly a lovable
creature. At times, he can be downright dismissive, even of his most loyal
partnerships, setting aside virtually every vestige of emotion and tact to
react as a sort of fact-checking human calculator, adding up the clues with his
neuron-firing ‘little grey cells’ to debunk increasingly devious and
psychologically complex murder plots. Poirot’s brittle nature was brought into
full swing by Albert Finney’s singular turn as the celebrated detective in
Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Peter Ustinov
softened these rough edges considerably and, despite bearing virtually no
physical resemblance to the character as described by Christie, nevertheless
managed to convey the essence of Poirot in several movies made thereafter, the
most enduring, 1978’s all-star cliffhanger, Death on the Nile. But to
date, David Suchet remains the only actor to appear in adaptations of all Dame
Agatha’s Poirot mysteries in a visual medium - no small feat, and one for which
a change in broadcast format, as well as the creative talent toiling behind the
screen, created something of a disconnect within the franchise midway through
its staggering 24-year run. Initially
developed in partnership between screenwriter, Clive Exton and producer, Brian
Eastman, the one-hour mystery series, to air on PBS, made exceptional use of
period Art Deco locations and décor, chiefly overseen by Rob Harris until 2000.
Exton, in fact, adapted seven of Christie’s novels and fourteen of her short
stories for these teleplays before departing the franchise. The first eight
series were overseen entirely by Exton and Eastman until 2001 when they elected
to develop another series for the BBC, Rosemary & Thyme (2003-06).
In their absence, Michele Buck and
Damien Timmer set about to ‘revamp’ Poirot, the series on hiatus until 2003
when it returned as 2-hour ‘event programming’ on PBS and featuring a
deep-seated change in the overall tenor. Lost in this translation was
Christopher Gunning’s iconic and jocular Poirot theme, intermittently heard
thereafter, mostly as somber cues peppered throughout the remaining episodes
and, on the rarest occasion, re-orchestrated to spirited effect for the ‘end
titles.’ One can, I suppose, accept the overall darker flavor of these event
movies, as the more recent times are presumably ill-suited for that bon vivant’s
good-natured approach of the late 1980’s and early 90’s. Also set aside when
the franchise returned: those utterly gorgeous, uber-modernist sets as,
inevitably, the timeline had moved beyond the halcyon days of the early 1930’s
into that fast-approaching epoch of WWII. But personally, I cannot abide the
alterations made to contemporize Poirot for a younger audience, the facelift
lacking humor and taking on a much more macabre tone than was ever present in
any of Dame Agatha’s Poirot novels.
Buck and Timmer also lay heavily on
the more primeval metaphors and oft cliché-reoccurring motifs in their vigor to
bring sex, homo-eroticism, drug abuse and abortion to the forefront of their
plots, essentially abandoning all subtlety infused in the original series and,
in fact, Christie’s tales of terror. One of the more unforgivable sins in these
latter installments, ironically, Christie would have approved: the absence of
Poirot’s entourage in Series 9 through 12; Inspector Japp (played
with stoic zeal by Philip Jackson), Colonel Hastings (a disarming Hugh Fraser)
and his private secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon (the ever-plucky Pauline Moran).
Indeed, as Christie evolved the Poirot franchise, she too abandoned these
beloved reoccurring regulars, introducing the character of mystery novelist,
Ariadne Oliver as her alter ego (superbly imagined in several episodes by Zoë
Wanamaker) beginning in Series 10 in 2006. The debut of David Yelland as
Poirot’s ever-steadfast valet, George ought to have come much earlier, except
the original series, with its focus on the bro-mantic chemistry between Poirot
and Hastings, really had no place for yet another appendage to Poirot’s already
exceptionally well-ordered life.
David Suchet came to Poirot’s
pedigree under the auspices and acceptance of Dame Agatha’s surviving family. Her
grandson, Mathew Pritchard has been as impressed with Suchet’s performances
since, and, over the series’ evolution, Pritchard’s singular regret is that his
grandmother and Suchet never met. Christie died at the ripe old age of 85 in
1976. “My grandmother would have loved him, I am sure,” Pritchard has
reasserted numerous times. Indeed, Suchet’s Poirot is likely a creation
Christie would have found right on the mark, an outwardly fastidious disciple
and chronicler of human nature, beneath which Suchet intermittently allowed
Poirot’s seemingly bloodless demeanor to slip into glimpses of the inner
harbingers of grave sadness for his own lost opportunities with the fairer sex,
never better exhibited than in the episode, The Chocolate Box, in which
a decade-old unsolved crime is exposed by Poirot and we find that, as a young
Belgian police officer, he once harbored hidden feelings for the elegant,
Virginie Mesnard (Anna Chancellor), a woman desperate to learn the truth behind
the death of dashing young politico, Paul Deroulard (James Coombes). There were
also flashes of Poirot’s devotion to the ‘fairer sex’ in Peril at End House
– a 2-part mystery involving Polly Walker’s seemingly fresh-faced heiress,
Magdala ‘Nick’ Buckley, presumably in grave danger from an unknown assassin,
and much later, in The Labours of Hercules, where Poirot not only takes
pity on chauffeur, Ted Williams (Tom Austen), offering to reunite him with his
long-lost sweetheart, also, empathetic toward the drug-plagued ballerina,
Katrina (Fiona O'Shaughnessy), and, supposed abused wife, Elsie Clayton (Morvan
Christie).
Despite Suchet’s claim to have
pictorialized ‘all’ of Christie’s Poirot mysteries, there are several omissions
worth mentioning. First, two short stories ‘The Submarine Plans’ and ‘The
Market Basing Mystery,’ were never filmed in their original short story
format as Agatha Christie later reworked both into novellas (The Incredible
Theft, and, Murder in the Mews, respectively). Each of these was made into hour-long
episodes for the original franchise.
Also, the thirteen short stories comprising ‘The Labors of Hercules’
have been combined into a single episode of the same name – and, one of the
very best 2-hr. event movies in the franchise, with the character of
Lemesurier, giving a polite nod in another short story entirely, The
Lemesurier Inheritance, again - never filmed. Another absence is ‘The
Regatta Mystery’ – generally not considered part of the Poirot canon,
despite having first appeared in installments in the Strand Magazine in 1936
with Poirot as its crime-solver. Christie would later rework this story as a
Parker Pyne mystery. This is, in fact, how it was published as a full-fledged
novel in 1939 and has since been accepted into the Christie/Pyne, rather than
Poirot catalog. Lastly, the play ‘Black Coffee’ – distinctly a Hercule
Poirot mystery – remains conspicuously MIA for dubious reasons. It seems
Christie never rewrote the play as a novel. With the family’s complicity, a
post-mortem adaptation finally did arrive in book form in 1998. And Suchet did,
also, appear in the original play on stage – thus, solidifying his claim to
have ‘done justice’ to the entire authentic annals of Hercule Poirot.
The Poirot franchise is so
extensive that to do it justice in any review would mean a recitation as long
as the great man’s illustrious career. I shall refrain from such a list.
Suffice it to say, an evening spent with Hercule Poirot is never anything less
than invigorating. Interestingly, some of the most highly anticipated mysteries
in the Christie franchise are not altogether well-served by the television
format. Murder on the Orient Express, arguably Christie’s most enduring
Poirot mystery, is a rather wan ghost flower when directly compared to Sidney
Lumet’s feature film from 1974, starring Albert Finney; as is Death on the
Nile – the production values and lack of an all-star international cast,
leaving one to pine for Peter Ustinov’s glib repartee with David Niven’s
Colonel Race from 1978. Some of the irrefutable highlights in the TV franchise
are Triangle at Rhodes, in which a well-heeled actress is poisoned at a posh
hotel, Peril at End House/The Veiled Lady – where Poirot suspects the
intended victim and the murderer may be one in the same, The Kidnapped Prime
Minister, as Poirot is called in to restore order to a government in
crisis, and, The ABC Murders, where a killer taunts Poirot with
homicides, seemingly unrelated except for their adherence to the alphabet. In Death
in the Clouds the series’ creators splurged for a travelogue through Paris
as Poirot attempts to get to the bottom of a brutal homicide, while Hercule
Poirot’s Christmas has Poirot invited to an imposing country estate where a
wealthy diamond mine owner has been killed. In The Mystery of the Blue Train,
an heiress meets her untimely end while bound for a country retreat with her
lover. And, in Appointment with Death Poirot investigates the murder of
an archeologist’s mean-spirited wife.
Hallowe’en Party charts the
drowning of a child during a game of bobbing for apples while Cat Among the
Pigeons, creates an eerie atmosphere at an all-girl’s preparatory school where
the faculty are being picked off one at a time. In Elephants Can Remember,
Poirot is unaware his investigation into the murder of a noted psychiatrist is
linked to a 20-year-old murder/suicide, and in Dead Man’s Folly, Poirot
and Ariande Oliver journey to Nass House to investigate the murder of a
teenager and sudden disappearance of a wealthy young woman. In The Labours
of Hercule, Poirot hunts down a cunning serial killer atop an isolated
mountain retreat and in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case we bid a bittersweet
farewell to a dying Poirot, cared for by an aged Colonel Hastings after his
return to London finds Poirot in a convalescence home. Virtually all the ITV
installments immeasurably benefit from the producers’ great pains to photograph
this franchise in authentic, oft exotic locales - from London to Paris to Egypt
and all points in-between. Indeed, Poirot is one of the most lavishly appointed
TV series of its generation, most readily and superbly photographed by Chris
O’Dell (15 episodes) and Ivan Strasburg (11 episodes). The small army of writers, producers, cinematographers,
and production designers who have contributed to its period look are to be
sincerely commended, not just for their attention to every last detail, but in
maintaining continuity throughout the series’ fractured past with intermittent
fallow periods never once unsettling Suchet’s unimpeachable assimilation into
character. He remains the continuity that holds this franchise together.
In brief, Poirot was to
suffer several shake-ups along the way, threatening both its continuation and
its continuity. Acorn Media acquired the rights to series 1–6 and 11–12
while series 7–10 remained the intellectual property of co-producers,
A&E. Of interest, the A&E network broadcast versions omitted scenes,
presumably for time constraints. The eventual reissue of these episodes via ITV
has reinstated all this excised footage. But the change in corporate
sponsorship may also account for why these episodes included in ITV’s comprehensive
Poirot Blu-ray box set appear to have been sourced from badly worn
digital tape rather than film stock, with overly harsh contrast and riddled in
edge enhancement, marred also by a decided loss in color fidelity. It really is
quite unforgiveable, with appallingly subpar image quality to dog this set
intermittently from Season 7 onward. Beginning with The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd, and continuing right on through Cards on the Table, image
quality is highly suspect. Some episodes are more richly contrasted and stable,
but far too many exhibit wan colors, chroma smearing, anemic contrast and
digital anomalies to distort and distract, with jaggies and digital grit
plaguing quite a few of the masters used herein.
Series 1-6 and 12-13
represent the most competent mastering efforts in this box set. Herein, colors
are rich, contrast superb and fine detail shockingly layered in clothes, skin,
hair and background detail. Sheena Napier’s costume design showcases immaculate
suits for Poirot with razor-sharp exposure of their gorgeous tailoring in
pin-stripes and various other hand-woven textures. In close-up we can see even
the brilliantine matting Suchet’s perfectly upturned moustache. Alas, in Series
7-11, these virtues inexplicably evaporate, with image quality uneven and
problematic at best. Color density turns to chalk, as does overall clarity –
replaced in a few episodes by a very artificial sharpening of the image and
severe chroma bleeding. Miss McGuinty is Dead, as example, is virtually
unwatchable. Cards on the Table, not much better. In long shot, textures
and details severely blur, introducing other anomalies – aliasing and
electronic processing. It has been difficult to get any information on the
sources used in remastering these episodes in hi-def (despite ITV’s claim
everything was shot on Super16 between 1999-2000), but again, I strongly
suspect these episodes have been upscaled from digital tape, or, are the result
of some very dated hi-def scans in desperate need of a revisit. Whatever the
case, Poirot deserves far better than this!
The audio on all episodes from Series
1-13 has been superbly handled in 2.0 DTS. There are virtually zero
complaints here. Dialogue is very crisp and nuanced, and music and effects well
integrated into the mix. ITV has added some impressive bonus features along the
way, albeit – only on standard DVD, including 3 comprehensive documentaries.
The first, Being Poirot is a 62-minute globe-trotting excursion
that takes actor, David Suchet back to the various locales of Poirot’s most
memorable mysteries. The second, Super Sleuths (47 min.) is a wonderful
retrospective on the series with all its key players returning ‘to the scene of
the crime’ as it were, and recounting their favorite moments. Finally, there is
David Suchet on the Orient Express – also 47 min. but by far the
least successful, made as a junket to coincide with ITV’s re-imagining of the
classic Christie tale to whet the public’s appetite for its upcoming television
broadcast. Bottom line: Agatha
Christie’s drawing power as one of the most prescient writers of the 20th
century shows little signs of diminishing in the years since her passing.
Hercule Poirot remains as steadfast a part of our mystery-viewing culture as
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes; the super sleuth whose popularity
Christie had candidly endeavored to equal with Poirot’s creation. ITV’s
comprehensive box set is not without its shortcomings. But, this is still a
worthwhile set to get your favorite armchair crime-solver moxie on. There are
no ‘dull’ moments in Poirot. While we all have our favorites, each here
is a gemstone to be treasured for years to come. Bottom line: highly recommended
for content, but with caveats for its inconsistently rendered video quality.
Regrets.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
4.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
Series 1-6
4.5
Series 7-11 2
Series 12-13 4
3.5
Comments