I recently found this TV series, as well as several full length films, on the obscure BIO channel. Based on Agatha Christie’s character and starring David Suchet. I had never seen it before and I have been racking them up on my DVR every Sunday, sometimes three and four shows back-to-back.
I think I like the fact that the series and films are all period pieces, with lots of art deco and references to world events during that time period. Granted, some of the mysteries are pretty simple to figure out, but the production values are 90% of the fun.
Any British Dopers know if David Suchet is still making new Poirot episodes and films?
Season TWELVE!? Wow, looks like I will be getting my Poirot fix for quite some time to come!
I also like/hate the actor who plays Hastings. He is a great actor, but he has turned Hastings into a twit that you sometimes just want to slap upside the head. Don’t remember Hastings character like that in the books, but it has been a long time since I have read them, so maybe my memory is foggy. But David Suchet is just perfect in the role - and I enjoy his quirks and fleshing out of the character. After watching him, I cannot imagine anyone else playing the role.
I was about to give an :eek: face to the 12 seasons, but then I remember watching them some time ago, around about the time when I still went on caravaning holidays with the family and that was over ten years ago
I’ve just been through all the available DVDs on Netflix, so it’s great to know there are more coming! I’m also glad to see they’re finally doing some of the stories with Agatha Christie’s stand-in character, Ariadne Oliver.
David Suchet is a wonderful Poirot, especially when you contrast him with earlier attempts at the role: the shouting and arm-waving Albert Finney; the much too tall Peter Ustinov; and the painful-to-watch Tony Randall.
It always throws me to see Hugh Fraser (Hastings) in another role, where he’s playing someone who isn’t dimwitted.
If you want to see a very anti-Poirot role for Suchet, check out The Way We Live Now: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0300879/ (Also features Matthew Macfadyen, who played Mr. Darcy in the recent Pride and Prejudice, Shirley Henderson , aka Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter movies, and Miranda Otto with a bad Texas accent).
I discovered it over a decade ago when several series worth were imported to the States through PBS’s Mystery! program, and I watch them from time to time when my TiVo picks them up.
I sometimes wonder how Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! can still continue now that A&E, BBC America and DVD all compete in the British-TV-import biz.
I remember when the series was brand-new (It was originally broadcast, in the States, on Mystery!). There was a lot of hoopla about how much padding and makeup it took to make David Suchet look fat.
Anyway: you can buy an awful lot of the DVDs at an awfully good price at acornonline.com .
There are some recurring items in the episodes, too. Look out for the zebra-stripe drapes.
I’ve very much enjoyed David Suchet’s portrayal of Poirot in the couple of episodes that I’ve seen. I’ve been irritated though by the liberties that the scriptwriters have taken with the plots and minor characters. In one that I saw Poirot and Hastings were actually in a restaurant with Miss Lemon having dinner! The concept of Poirot and Miss Lemon interracting in any way outside their “office” relationship is quite bizarre.
Speaking of Ustinov, whom I always loved but was abominable as Poirot, there is his version of 13 at Dinner that featured David Suchet as - Inspector Japp. And very good he was in that role too.
Odddly enough, Agatha Christie herself frequently objected to mysteries that featured a clueless sidekick whose only role is to make the detetective look even more brilliant by comparison, She called that cliched character The Idiot Friend.
To a small extent, Hastings met that description, as did Dr. Watson (the original Idiot Friend?)… but both Hastings and Watson are supposed to be intelligent, resourceful men, men of action, men who’ve seen combat, men who have some practical knowledge of the world that their eccentric detective friends lack.
That’s why I liked David Burke so much as Dr. Watson in the BBC “Sherlock Holmes” series with Jeremy Brett, and why I found Edward Hardwicke unbearable. Hardwicke was too much a latter-day Nigel Bruce!
Hastings is bound to loook like a dunce next to Poirot, but he’s not supposed to be there for comic relief, as Hugh Fraser seems to be. The funny thing is, in the BBC productions of “Poirot,” Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson) comes across as smarter and more competent than he does in many of Christie’s stories.
