For over a quarter of a century, actor David Suchet has been essaying his most iconic role, that of Agatha Christie’s gloriously eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. With the five productions contained in Series 13 of this release, the Poirot adventures have now come to an end after seventy productions (both hour long and TV-movie length) and that many or more criminals exposed and, if not always brought to justice, at least identified with their secrets brought out into the open. One would like to say that they’ve saved the best for the last, but, alas, a couple of these final adventures have been culled from among Mrs. Christie’s weakest efforts and a couple are from short story collections which have been plumbed to ferret out the best bits to fashion into a TV-movie length mystery. All are worth seeing, certainly, for Suchet’s brilliant interpretation of Poirot in his final years as a detective, but viewers will have to revisit previous years of the series to find the sleuth at his undoubted best.
Studio: Other
Distributed By: N/A
Video Resolution and Encode: 1080P/AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audio: English 2.0 DTS-HDMA
Subtitles: English SDH
Rating: Not Rated
Run Time: 7 Hr. 32 Min.
Package Includes: Blu-ray
keep case with leaves in a slipcoverDisc Type: BD50 (dual layer)
Region: All
Release Date: 11/04/2014
MSRP: $59.99
The Production Rating: 3.5/5
Elephants Can Remember, the first feature in the set, was actually the last Poirot mystery Agatha Christie wrote (Poirot’s final case Curtain had actually been written during World War II and put in a vault for posthumous publication). Written when the author was eighty-two, it is not up to the complex puzzles and masterful con jobs she pulled off during her golden years, and anyone with a working knowledge of Mrs. Christie’s fondness for identical twins and deceitful lovers will have no trouble arriving at a solution before Poirot announces his own. Screenwriter Nick Dear has assisted Mrs. Christie by adding a murder of a famous doctor that Poirot is investigating while his friend Mrs. Ariadne Oliver (Zoë Wanamaker), who had come asking Poirot for his help, goes off on her own investigating an apparent murder/suicide that had happened thirteen years earlier. The two cases invariably intersect, so the two old friends do finally end up working on the same case, but it isn’t one of Mrs. Christie’s brightest hours.
Even weaker as a book is The Big Four, a collection of short stories scrabbled together by Mrs. Christie with linking material to try to tie the disparate tales together as a single narrative. It was collated during the worst period of Christie’s life when her beloved husband Archie Christie had asked her for a divorce after falling in love with another woman, so the book was not up to her usual standards. Once again, scenarists Mark Gatiss and Ian Hallard assist Mrs. Christie by culling bits and pieces from the stories to fashion a narrative concerning a mysterious international cabal of killers known as the Big Four. During the course of the story (moved from the mid-1920s to 1938), four murders are committed allegedly by their hand and even Poirot’s life comes dangerously close to being snuffed out by a clever mastermind before he’s exposed. The feature, infinitely more entertaining than the book and reuniting Poirot with Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran), Hastings (Hugh Fraser), and Japp (Philip Jackson), does away with two notable personages: Poirot’s brother Achille and the one woman Poirot ever showed any interest in Countess Vera Rossakoff, but neither is missed, and the mystery is actually better than it has any right to be coming from such strained source material.
Poirot is on much more solid ground in Dead Man’s Folly, one of Mrs. Christie’s classic cases of misdirection in which many of the characters are not who they claim to be and thus make the investigation completely impenetrable until Poirot clears matters up quite succinctly. Once again, Mrs. Oliver (Zoë Wanamaker) figures into the story asking for Poirot’s help in the preparation of a “murder game” at a village fete where her make-believe victim actually turns out to be murdered during the course of the contest. The manor house called Nasse House in the story is actually Agatha Christie’s real estate Greenway located in Devon, and exteriors for the movie were filmed on the actual grounds.
Another book of short stories is picked over to provide the narrative for The Labours of Hercules. Writer Guy Andrews has chosen bits and pieces from three of the stories in the collection, all modern day modifications of the mythological twelve labors of Hercules. Hercule Poirot’s old love Countess Vera Rossakoff (Orla Brady) does turn up in a major way in this bittersweet reflection on lost love, but much of the narrative actually resembles Christie’s most famous work for the stage The Mousetrap (now playing in its sixty-second year in London) where a group of guests are housed in an isolated location (in this movie, a hotel in the Swiss Alps) with an unknown murderer (code named Marrascaud) among the inhabitants. With thefts and blackmail figuring into the story as well as murders, the movie, while not faithful to Mrs. Christie’s original work, certainly makes for a satisfying mystery especially when Poirot in the classic tradition gathers all of the suspects into a room before revealing the identities of the culprits.
The adventures of Hercule Poirot come to a surprising albeit mournful end with Curtain, the Poirot story in which the Belgian detective finally meets his maker. Before he leaves us forever, he unveils three killers, two of them among the most surprising in the entire oeuvre of Agatha Christie, a series that began and now ends at Styles Court, the scene of both Poirot’s first and now last cases. Screenwriter Kevin Elyot is very faithful to Mrs. Christie’s novel where Poirot, now hobbled by old age and in a wheelchair, requests his old friend Arthur Hastings (Hugh Fraser) to come see him one last time. Styles is no longer a private home but now a commercial guest house, and while the clientele in residence when Hastings arrives seems fairly benign, Poirot warns a murder will be committed quite soon, and there is so much sadness and frustration bubbling beneath the surface of these otherwise pleasant people that Poirot is obviously right. He’s expecting Hastings to be his eyes and ears, but the poor man is too distracted by his daughter’s (Alice Orr-Ewing) romantic escapades to be of much help to Poirot. The denouement is contained in a letter delivered to Hastings four months after his death in which Poirot reveals all, and the episode allows David Suchet a wonderful acting tour de force, at one point even without the infamous Poirot mustache!
Video Rating: 4/5 3D Rating: NA
The films are all presented in 1.78:1 and are offered in 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. Picture quality seems the most impressive in Dead Man’s Folly. In the other items in the set, contrast seems to vary more than is completely satisfying making darker lit scenes almost milky in tone. Color reproduction for all five mysteries is muted though very good with greens being especially vivid and no blooming in any of the hues and with flesh tones, while a bit pale, mostly believable. Sharpness is generally good to very good in all of the movies. Each film has been divided into 9 chapters.
Audio Rating: 4/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 sound mix offers rich stereo tracks which present excellent fidelity for each of the five films. Each transfer features music scores by Christian Henson and sound effects which blend nicely with the well-recorded dialogue which is never compromised by other elements of the mix.
Special Features Rating: 2/5
David Suchet Interview (18:45, HD): on the set of Dead Man’s Folly, the actor answers a series of questions about his preparations for the role and his most cherished memories of playing it for all these years.
Photo Montage (1:54, HD): a series of automatically advanced photographs and studio portraits taken during various episodes from this season.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
The final three adventures in this final set of TV-movies more than compensate for the weaker initial two entries making Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Series 13 well worth purchasing especially for fans of the famous detective. One wishes the bonuses were more pronounced and celebratory since this is the last of the series, but the movies are the thing, and they’ve been produced with the same loving care that has been imparted in all of the productions of this series for twenty-six years.
Reviewed By: Matt Hough
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