Day 362/365: ABC Agatha Christie

[nanila]

Things I like:
1) Agatha Christie
2) Her detective Hercule Poirot
3) John Malkovich

So to say I was a little bit excited the BBC had decided to combine these things for holiday season three-part production of The A.B.C. Murders would be an understatement.

Brb; having a grand time with iPlayer

Comments

[legionseagle]

I was a lot more taken with this one than many friends of mine were, and I think Malkovich was inspired casting.

[perennialanna]

I really did like John Malkovich in the first episode; what threw me out of it for the next two was the amount of gloomy-staircasery and written words appearing on screen far too briefly for my Small Television Far Away set-up*. Still, I read the book on the strength of it, so that was a very positive result.

*Plus getting the trees all wrong for the clearly stated time of year. And if they had stuck to the very different time of year specified in the book, the trees would have been absolutely fine. I also had seasonality problems with the Lucy Worsley thing about Queen Victoria's wedding - the actual wedding was in February, and it didn't seem to have occurred to them when filming their reconstruction in the height of summer that one of the Grand Dishes (which they were taking from a book written by the next Royal Chef, the actual menu not being available) being asparagus seemed somewhat unseasonal. I also think they got the Roasted Avian wrong, with the blithe sentence "and here it says Roasted Bird, which means chicken" - to a gamekeeper, Bird (unspecified) always means partridge, and any other fowl will be specified by name. Partridge in February sounds rather more likely anyway.

[nanila]

It cannot displace Suchet's Poirot in my head-canon, for sure. It was almost unremittingly grim, which is not in the spirit of Christie, IMO.

[ljravengirl]

I want to watch the thing and the stuffs that is so goodly! Hope it hits the states soon-ish!

[nanila]

I hope so too! It's worth watching, although it is a little grim for a Poirot, I feel. I always felt Christie's Poirot was meant to be played with touches of humour here and there, and this is almost entirely lacking them.

[cactus_rs]

but David Suchet is the One True Poirot...!!!

[nanila]

I don't think this changes that. In fact my on big problem with this production is how dark and brooding it was. I mean, sure, it's allowed to be for a section of it, what with people being randomly murdered in gruesome ways, but the whole thing about Poirot is it all winds up nicely with him having a cuppa and a natter with Hastings at the end. It kind of...took itself too seriously.