Poirot has been done to death, literally. By many very bad actors, or actors who were nothing like what Poirot was supposed to be like. He was described as a small man with an egg-shaped head, a magnificent mustache, and a touch of embonpoint. The closest physically so far was, of course, David Suchet, but that fat suit they made him wear made him look like he was auditioning for The Penguin. But I could forgive that. In the end they (and/or Suchet) decided to make him a religious nut, something for which there is no support in any of the books. We don’t need (and I don’t want to see) another clueless actor to fake a pseudo-Belgian accent and show off some ridiculously inappropriate mustache. And now he has a beard, which would have been anathema.
The plot of this particular mystery was probably very clever when it was first published, but by now it has become a meme of every mediocre police show (in general, not the specifics). Most modern viewers will have no problem guessing what is going on.
They appear to be intending to transplant yet another personality change on this poor hapless character. Now he is going to be old and lugubrious (this was one of his earlier cases in the books) and sad and vulnerable. Poirot never let anyone see whatever inner turmoil he might have had; sometimes he was a little ridiculous, nothing more.
Really, can’t someone write some new stories?
My relief from this cancer of show business is that I won’t accidentally run into this show, except possibly on Youtube after a while, because I am not an Amazon Prime member. Yet another good reason not to join that particular club.
I agree with your post, especially #1. David Suchet perfected the TV/movie Poirot so let’s just move on. I tried to watch Kenneth Branagh’s “Murder” and didn’t last for 5 minutes–and I’m otherwise a big Branagh fan. The advertisements for Malkovich’s Poirot make me ill. Just stop already. Enough Poirot.
You have to put out of your mind any other idea of what Poirot ought to be, to get anything out of this production.
This production is from the same team that made something very eerie and state-of-the-world portentous out of Witness for the Prosecution a couple of years ago.
In the end, for me this production didn’t work as well. Too long, too slow, too heavy for the narrative structure. Agatha Christie just isn’t as deep a literary figure as some seem to be trying to make her.
It was so much better than some of the modern “detectives” that I really cannot support the criticism.
I loved the dark sets with crumbling buildings, a huge difference with the idealized picture of the ‘30s in the series with Suchet (which I also love).
I loved Malkovic’s interpretation of an elderly Hero. I think the flashbacks to his past were true to the books but it is so long ago I read those that I’m not sure.
There is a steady stream of new mystery being written, some of it is even put on film in an entertaining manner. That does not mean you cannot go back to the classics of the genre and put your own spin on it.
Some more than others, but I don’t disagree. I don’t think it’s that all the good plots have already been used, as it is that under time pressure to produce a mystery a week, a lot of TV writers have borrowed heavily from the tried and true.
eta: I just realized my numbering was off and #3 appeared twice. These couple of posts should have been about #2, if there had been one.
Yeah, really not seeing it either. Malkovich could possibly do a passable Holmes, but Poirot ? The latter’s not just prissy and OCD, he’s also exhuberant and a bon vivant. Two things you couldn’t get in the same room, hell, in the same *town *as John Malkovich.
Ain’t that the truth! I was reading a British mystery set (and written) in WWII when I realized that an episode of that silly Father Brown TV series was a direct steal of the murder method and motive. The book was Green for Danger.
A month or so ago, I was reading a Hitchcock Sewell mystery (the first one), and the backstory of one of the characters was exactly the same as one used for a character in that crappy TV series Instinct. They even used the same name for the dead undercover cop/fiance.
Oh, that’s one of my favorite mystery movies, I love seeing Scrooge, I mean Alastair Sim, as a detective. I must have missed that episode of what you have aptly called “that silly Father Brown TV series” (another travesty), I’m sure I would have remembered and groaned.
Yeah, I’m gonna say my instincts were right, and that this producer of Agatha Christie can safely be left in the can, as far as I’m concerned.
It’s not the cosy Suchet-era Poirot, but Malkovich is great. His Poirot is elderly, weary, disillusioned and no worse for that. He’s mocked by the current generation of police detectives - the business of murder isn’t usually settled in the drawing rooms of the landed gentry by amateurs, after all. It’s always been a much murkier business than that.
It’s worth a watch. There’s a member of the core Harry Potter movie cast in it that I wouldn’t have recognised - unprompted by publicity - in a million years.
