MAWH - In a dark corner of Lesser Blogfordshire: February 2019

My indistinguishable mutterings of the following text may be heard at https://soundcloud.com/user-868590968/rta032-episode-32
- this is the hopefully more distinguishable text version...

PODCAST 17 – POIROT

On the telly now,

It’s Poirot! It’s Poirot!

And Poirot is the one who’s going to solve the crime

You’ll be found out

By Poirot! By Poirot!

And if you’re lucky you’ll end up only doing time

For you know that most of these murders foul

Would end up with you being hanged in jail

Without fail! Without fail!

That’s what would happen to you

So if there’s a crime

Call Poirot! Yes, Poirot!

And Poirot is about to go and solve this crime right now

On the telly now,

It’s Poirot! It’s Poirot!

It’s Poirot!

Debuting at the tail end of the 1980s and destined to run – on and off - for another 24 years, and adapting (with relative faithfulness to the source material) all of his adventures as written by Agatha Christie, ITV’s version of POIROT is – at least initially – a masterclass in adapting a well-known and long-running literary character for the small screen.

Forget all of the other versions, because, just like with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, and Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, David Suchet as POIROT is pretty much the definitive version and is unlikely to be surpassed for a very long time - if ever, given the way television has changed in the intervening years.

Those casting directors back then really knew what they were doing, didn’t they?

Some later episodes do deviate some way from the original words of Agatha Christie, with little reason, given that her plotting and lean-but-inciteful character studies are usually so immaculate, but these early stories are absolutely right on the money.

There are still some who claim Agatha Christie was just a horrible old racist who ought not to get the praise she deserves – much of that based around some admittedly unfortunate stereotyping prevalent during the times the books were being written, and that one regrettable book title which used to use a word that we don’t use nowadays in polite company, and which used to draw sharp intakes of breath from me and people of my generation and age group, when even my own Grandmother used to use it to describe a paint colour.

I kid you not.

But despite all that Hercule (not Hercules) Poirot is a Belgian (not French) refugee who has made a good life for himself in the England between the wars by using his considerable deductive powers and his astonishing “little grey cells” to great effect.

The opening episode “THE ADVENTURE OF THE CLAPHAM COOK” written by the writer once ubiquitous for that kind of period drama, Clive Exton, and directed by Edward Bennett, was first broadcast on the 8^th of January 1989 and very quickly shows pretty much all of the building blocks for the series as a whole already in place.

Aside from POIROT himself, there’s Captain Hastings, played with effortless “nice-but-dim” charm by Hugh Fraser; the snappily efficient and loyal Miss Lemon played by Pauline Moran; and the wonderfully bewildered but pragmatic Inspector Japp from Scotland Yard played with quiet brilliance by Philip Jackson, right from the get-go, all of whom would, to a lesser or greater extent, stick with the series - when required - right through to the end, almost a quarter of a century, and thirteen series, later.

And they’re all pretty much perfect casting.

There’s an old interview that my Beloved’s mother occasionally refers to with Joan Hickson, the actor responsible for breathing life into another definitive version of an Agatha Christie character, where she claims that finding the character was all about the shoes and getting the walk right, and, in the strangely computerised art deco-ish title sequence – which admittedly has aged a tad and was wisely dropped in the later adaptations – Hercule Poirot definitely has a distinctive walk which, if the stories are to be believed, may have had something to do with David Suchet clutching a coin between his buttocks.

The hour-long version of the series comes as a bit of a shock to viewers more used to the later, feature-length version which became the norm once the short stories had been pretty much all used up, but follows the model successfully used by Granada for most of its earlier THE ADVENTURES, RETURN, CASE-BOOK and MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES series, and this format stuck around for several years, and was quite successful for much of the first five years, until the more “event” style of the occasional feature-length stories finally took over for good.

The episode itself opens with once (not-quite a) DOCTOR WHO Dermot Crowley sweatily packing a hefty looking trunk in a room somewhere. There’s a lot of rope tying, and intensity, and the shock of a vase smashing, and, whilst he might be just packing a trunk, well, he also might not be, given that this is the shiny new murder mystery series known as “Agatha Christie’s POIROT” (although the viewer might be distracted from its significance by the cast and credits popping up onscreen whilst all this is going on).

The action immediately shifts to Florin Court representing the delightfully symmetrical Whitehaven Mansions, the art deco style apartment building where Hercule Poirot, a lover of order in the chaos of life, rather naturally chooses to reside.

The first we see of our hero is his spats, perched aloft as he rests and a tracking shot moves along his immaculately clad body to his face as, in a fit of almost Holmesian ennui, we find Monsieur Poirot contemplating the boredom of his existence with his loyal colleague, Captain Arthur Hastings, who is going through the papers desperately trying to find a case worthy of contemplation by those “little grey cells” whilst being distracted, as he will, by his own irrelevant flights of fancy.

Several cases are dismissed, including a £90,000 bond robbery which, whilst being “a King’s ransom” is – disappointingly - not being used to ransom a King, and Poirot seeks a case of National Importance to occupy his mind, otherwise he will “touch it not!”

And so Poirot is instead fretting about the single spot of grease on his suit, and dealing with his overcoat, and maybe giving his moustache a much-overdue trim, when Miss Lemon bursts in with the grateful news that there is a lady to see him, and they are rescued from an afternoon of dealing with such mundane matters by a visit from Brigit Forsyth as the unreasonable Mrs Todd, who is in search of her missing cook.

Watching this I was reminded of the vague sense we got a couple of decades ago, that we were being stalked by Brigit Forsyth. Well, either that or we were inadvertently stalking her ourselves, because she coincidentally turned up in the audience at several theatrical events we also attended. Even now we keep an eye out for her, even though we know that it is terribly unlikely that she will appear.

The scene here is a rather wonderful introduction to Poirot and his little foibles. From bristling at having been approached to investigate something as “mundane” as a missing domestic, to outright exasperation when Mrs Todd suggests that he may himself have written a piece that she had seen in the newspaper praising his talents.

Not that we’d put it past him.

But Mrs Todd is a terrifying force of nature, and her suggestion that he is “too proud” to take on such a “trivial” case, and that to someone like her “a good cook’s a good cook” and is just as great a loss charms Poirot enough to take a car ride with her over to 88 Prince Albert Road, Clapham.

At the moment, of course, we are supposed to suspect that maybe it is the missing cook who is the victim here, and, of course, it turns out that she is, but, this being an episode of POIROT, perhaps not in the manner we at first think.

On the way to the Todd’s suburban semi-detached idyll, we see some beautifully recreated street scenes as their classic vintage car crosses Chelsea’s Albert Bridge, which has been redressed back to its 1930s look, and where there are several other vintage vehicles, and a host of extras in period dress, proving to the viewer that some serious money has been spent on this lavish looking series.

We also get to see Clapham Common as we pass by, also dressed with a full range of extras, so they’re really not messing about here.

A scene plays out with Poirot, Hastings, and Mrs Todd in the back of her car, and we discover that Eliza Dunn has sent for her travelling box – the large trunk we hopefully remember from the opening scenes - and we also learn that Mrs Todd has – or had - two servants, one being “Eliza Dunn” the missing cook, and the other being her maid.

How times have changed, folks. A relatively affluent middle-class but otherwise fairly ordinary suburban couple would have full-time domestic staff living in to do the cooking and cleaning despite Mrs Todd not having a job herself.

Small wonder people lived in such fear of destitution, and no wonder so many of us have grandparents who were “in service” when they were younger. There was a war coming, and that would change everything, but that’s still some time in the future for these stories.

The scene ends with Mrs Todd pointing out “That’s number eighty-eight” and the car, in the wide shot, taking a long, long time to actually pull up to number 88, from the time of her mentioning it, to actually stopping on another fully redressed street.

As they enter the house, however, Poirot is concerned and confides to Hastings that “Never must Chief Inspector Japp hear I have investigated such a case!” because he is still bothered about his reputation, even if his “Poirot-Sense” is tingling and, sometimes, you just get the impression that Poirot KNOWS more about what’s going on already.

Inside number eighty-eight, Poirot chats to Annie below stairs. Annie is played by Katy Murphy, and gives a lovely performance in a charming little scene where Poirot is both charming and a bit of an old flatterer, as he listens to her naïve tales of white slavers, and the cook’s obsession with the stewed peaches which might have led her astray, and discovers that the box was already packed before it was sent for, which proves significant to him as he demonstrates an impeccable logic that Annie, quite obviously, doesn’t have, although, for her, a penny does finally drop, and it’s a delight to see.

He’s always very polite and kind to anyone in domestic service is our Poirot. It’s as if he has an affinity for the underdog and really feels sympathy for their wretched lot in life – especially when such a life is made particularly wretched by their snotty employers who “but for the grace of” and so forth could very well have been in domestic service themselves.

You tend to notice that if you watch him a lot.

The great and the good often get short shrift, but rarely the domestics. Well, not unless the domestic is just a villain pretending to be a domestic, of course.

Outside the door, Mrs Todd has been earwigging, feeling rather paranoid that sweet little Annie might be bad-mouthing her employer. As Poirot takes his leave of Annie and heads back upstairs, she scuttles away from the door, and pretends to read her magazine, displaying all of her middle-class snobbery in a sparklingly-played character moment, which marks her out – momentarily – as a bit of a wrong-un with secrets to hide.

We also learn that the banker’s wife also has a banking lodger, and that missing ninety-grand mentioned earlier starts to get Monsieur Poirot’s “little grey cells” tingling.

Seeing as the Banker and his clerk aren’t due back for a while, Poirot and Hastings bugger off to the park for an hour – justifying all those extras we spotted on the Common earlier – and Poirot points out that the clerk Simpson worked in the same office as the absconded clerk, Davies, missing along with all that money since the previous Wednesday.

The plot, as they say, is thickening.

After their stroll and chat, they return to the house and meet Mr Todd (Anthony Carrick) who is obviously a cad, as he only makes himself a drink, and doesn’t offer to share his booze with either Captain Hastings or Poirot.

So far, so suburban, and Agatha doesn’t seem particularly smitten by the middle classes.

Or Doctors, for that matter.

She does really seem to have it in for Doctors, if you read a lot of her works.

But, getting back to the plot, for the moment we are suspicious of these Todds, and, as he guides them up the staircases towards Simpson the lodger’s room - all, we note, from the relative comfort of his own hallway – there’s no way he was going to climb all the way up there! – the sinister soundtrack tells us that something is indeed afoot.

On knocking, however, Simpson answers, and Poirot gets to meet him face-to-face and - surprise, surprise – it’s that sinister sweaty-looking fellow we saw packing that trunk right at the start of the programme, and so, perhaps, the Todds are simply horrible middle-class folk after all.

So, in a roundabout way, Poirot interviews Simpson, and Simpson in return obfuscates, claiming to know nothing. As Poirot goes to depart, in the best COLUMBO “Just one more thing” tradition, he asks “Tell me…” and, after a significant pause, asks a seemingly innocent sounding question about what a young gentleman gets up to in his free time.

At this point he GETS IN VERY CLOSE to Simpson, and we begin to wonder whether he understands English boundaries in his funny foreign way, and whilst his queries about “Amateur theatricals” all seem rather throwaway, keep watching because they will become very SIGNIFICANT later.

Meanwhile, night has fallen in Clapham and, as they are walking back across the bridge at night (in a very expensive-looking night shoot), Poirot points out to Hastings that just because somebody doesn’t offer you a drink doesn’t make them a criminal, and that he is very interested in this case indeed.

We then cut to Poirot in close up in his office in an absolute fury as Mr Todd has been in touch to tell him that his wife was out of line, and that he should drop the case, and has tried to pay him off with a single guinea for his trouble.

Poirot is livid and rants about this “Two penny half penny case” as Poirots slightly misspoken use of English is something of a character point and his pride has been hurt.

Swearing that he intends to “get to the bottom of this” no matter what the cost, he asks Miss Lemon to place a notice that he has “something that would be to her advantage” (as Hastings corrects him to put it) in all of the newspapers. Miss Lemon dismisses The Times, thinking that a cook is unlikely to read such a publication, but Poirot sagely points out that someone who knows her may read The Times.

Hastings, meanwhile, wants to “pop over” to Sandown races, a little moment that helps to underscore both Hastings’ indolence and his love of gambling. This is the first of several of Hastings’ “sure things” that rarely turn out well, and will become a bit of a running gag throughout their time together.

Meanwhile, Poirot decides to “pop” to the City of London and meets up with the Bank Manager, Mr Cameron (played by Richard Bebb), in the beautiful Art Deco interior of the Bank.

We will see far more of this kind of stuff as the series progresses – often, one suspects, in exactly the same filming location.

Meanwhile, in the lovingly recreated location of the Bank’s Interior, Chief Inspector Japp is interviewing staff about the missing £90,000, and is in conversation with the very same Simpson we saw earlier, who worked with Davies, and seems to suggest that the missing Davies never went to foreign places.

In the middle of the interview he spots Poirot coming down the stairs, pointing out to Japp that he recognises him from yesterday.

Japp goes over to say hello, and, as he turns, Poirot’s face becomes a picture of mock surprise, even as it turns out that Japp knows that he has been “reduced” to finding “missing domestics” which is the first example of the affectionate banter within the friendly relationship that exists between the two characters, and which develops throughout the stories.

Interestingly, at this time, Poirot seems to not be the pale, more refined, figure we later see in high definition in later series. It could, of course, simply be down to the film stock being used at this time, but the show does have a very different look to it in those earlier series.

There follows a bit of a montage as Poirot waits at home to hear from the missing cook. We see him at the window, close up on his telephone – still nothing – and Poirot seems bothered, and distracted, in his office. Time has passed and hasn’t had any response to his adverts or any word from Eliza, until a letter brightens him in which she announces that she’s already got her “legacy”, and is happily residing in Keswick or “Kes-Wick” as Poirot amusingly puts it.

And so Hastings and Poirot have a train to catch, and soon a steam train crosses the wide open spaces of the Lake District, with a couple of extras in period hiking gear in the foreground just to show it’s not stock footage they’re using.

The chat on the train is all about the empty wasteland of this particular version of the countryside, which compares interestingly with the Sherlock Holmes view of the great outdoors harbouring the worst of criminals several decades earlier, and Poirot is pondering upon “bigger things” in his enigmatic way.

Then, in an almost comic sequence, the same feet we first saw of him are now unpleasantly standing in mud, and, as Poirot and Hastings are troubled by sheep, we see Poirot as a veritable fish out of water in this dreadful Great Outdoors, preferring paintings to the harsh reality of countryside, and extolling the virtues of the good air of town.

Arriving at the humble home of Fell Cottage, Poirot is less than impressed, even though the missing cook has been found. Freda Dowie, playing Eliza, is a simple and elderly soul unlikely to have the target of the white slave trade, but she has a quiet dignity in the fact that she is no longer a servant and that this is “her” house.

Her pride in the small sum of money and the house she inherited is all quite tragic really, although she is naïve, we are not supposed to think she’s a bit dim. She simply hoped for a better life and thought that her ship had come in. The story doesn’t dwell upon the disappointments to come, although she does seem surprised that Mr Crotchet did not forward on her letter of explanation to Mrs Todd like he promised to.

There is a flashback. She was intercepted on way home from her day off the previous Wednesday, and taken to a café by this Mr Crotchet, and where she was told of her legacy – this house and a small amount of money – by this scruffy looking man claiming to be a lawyer and who had (Bad Guy Disguise Alert!) a beard and glasses.

I don’t imagine someone with Eliza’s background might have known he was particularly scruffy-looking, by the way, especially with such good news to impart, and she certainly failed to notice this was a disguised lodger running a bit of a “Red Headed League” style con on a naïve spinster.

One of the stipulations of the alleged Last Will and Testament she’s benefitting from is that she MUSTN’T BE A DOMESTIC and, because this is a greed con, he persuades her that she had to have left Domestic service “before we met” and, as the penny drops (we’re making a fortune here), this suddenly all seems SO SAD (!!!) when we realise what he has persuaded her to do – pretty much give up her security to become complicit in a lie.

Back in the present with Poirot, the fact that her possessions turned up wrapped in brown paper and not in her trunk becomes clearer to her - she assumed that Mrs Todd was offended, but she would be if she’d not got her letter of explanation.

The pace now quickens. Leaving the no longer missing cook behind to find out the awful truth for herself, Poirot and Hastings make haste to return to London, and Poirot makes a hasty phone call to Inspector Japp from a phone box on Carlisle Station before dashing onto a train. We know this is supposed to be Carlisle Station thanks to a huge - and probably wildly inaccurate - sign filmed somewhere completely different I’m sure, but no matter.

As they travel back towards civilisation, Poirot and Hastings have another chat as they sit in the relative comfort of First Class, and we get the first proper mention of those “Little Grey Cells” as the fiendish plot is explained for both Captain Hastings and those of us sitting at home. That earlier proximity is explained when Poirot reveals that he spotted a fleck of theatrical gum in Simpson’s sideburns as he was talking to him and, because Hastings is sometimes so very dim, he slowly catches up with the fact that Simpson in disguise was pretending to be the lawyer, but finally – FINALLY! - he gets it, and yet another penny drops (we really are making a fortune here).

POIROT, as he will, SMILES KNOWINGLY in extreme close-up.

POIROT KNOWS!

Back at eighty-eight Prince Albert Road, Poirot arrives to find the Police there and the whole household in a bit of a frenzy. When the door is answered, to prick his pomposity, he is not recognised by the uniformed officers, and we get one of those “Some French Chap” gags that permeate the entire series, as his Belgian roots are misunderstood.

An emerging Inspector Japp is not happy with what he believes to have been something of a wild goose chase, believing Simpson to be the Bank Clerk he claims to be, and not the notorious crook Poirot thinks that he is, although Mrs Todd, berating Poirot through a downstairs window, is even more unhappy with him and gives him short shrift, with exclamations of “You were paid off!” and he is denied access to ask Annie his one vital question.

However, not to be outwitted, he sneaks down the back stairs outside to talk to Annie through the window and extricates more details about the once-missing cook’s now missing box, and specifically about the label, and, because she’s not completely daft, and actually rather sweet, Annie remembers what was written upon it, and where it went, Twickenham Station, and we have been treated to another scene of Poirot being rather lovely to her again.

And of course, we now know that POIROT KNOWS what’s going on, and when POIROT KNOWS, the game is pretty much over.

We head off to another exterior railway station location in all its Art Deco loveliness again, and Poirot replies to Hastings question about the house in Keswick by suggesting that he’d be surprised if she has more than a six months lease, which is SO sad, and the only real acknowledgement of the miserable fraud committed upon Eliza Dunn.

We are left to wonder about the consequences for her in the long run, although “a good cook is a good cook”, so hopefully she’ll be all right in the end.

Meanwhile, as they approach a window, Poirot explains that Simpson did all of this rather than buying a new trunk because he needed a respectable trunk – TO PUT THE BODY IN!

(CLANG!!!)

Sadly, the trunk in question has been sent to Glasgow, and whilst the Porter they talk to is sarcastic about the fact that it has been, Poirot flatters to deceive him, whilst Hastings is all “now see here, my good man” gittishness and has to be shut up.

However, they do manage to extract the supposition that the Porter “bets” that the supposed owner of the trunk’s going to Bolivia because he noticed it written on the notes in the stack of cash he was brandishing when he paid.

Danny Webb, playing the Porter, incidentally, is one of the select few guest actors to get to play more than one role in the POIROT TV series. He’d return as Superintendent Bill Garroway in ”Elephants Can Remember” 24 years later, rather nicely bracketing the series with appearances in both the first and the last series of episodes.

Back at Poirot’s office, they are busily checking the newpapers for the week’s sailings – those were the days – and Poirot has to point out to Hastings that Bolivia is a land-locked country – whilst Miss Lemon is wistful about “such exotic names” in an era when such travel to faraway places was little more than a dream to most people.

Finding what they need, they must away to Southampton, but first they must pay a visit to Scotland Yard and explain to a bewildered and sceptical Inspector Japp about what’s really been going on as he’s been chasing around looking for the missing Clerk, Davies.

In Japp’s office, he is still insistent that it is Davies whom they are after, until the phone rings explaining that the missing trunk has indeed been found in the Glasgow luggage office, and whilst Poirot implores them to OPEN IT, the forces of Law and Order still need a warrant, something expedited when Poirot exclaims that it might just have Davies’ body in it!

And in the fine tradition yet to be established in the series - (DENOUMENT! DENOUMENT!) - POIROT EXPLAINS as the body is indeed found, rather nastily folded inside the trunk as expected, and covered with a voiceover which transports us to Southampton Docks, where Poirot and company arrive, and board the SS Nevonia, discovering to their chagrin that “sailings are discontinued” and Simpson is not aboard.

However, another penny drops (hopefully not the one clutched firmly between our hero’s buttocks) and it becomes apparent that he’ll be trying to get aboard the “Queen of Heaven” because he’s off to Caracas in Venezuela and that word on the money spotted by the Porter was “Bolivar” (their unit of currency), and not "Bolivia” after all.

And with a bellow of “Simpson!” (who, like an idiot, looks round) and another shout of “STOP THAT MAN! (which a pair of handy stewards dutifully do) Simpson is taken, and gives our heroes the look of pure hatred of a man soon to be condemned to the gallows.

And as we think about one inevitable hanging, we cut to a picture being hanged, sorry hung on Poirot’s wall, with Poirot on directing duties, and Miss Lemon wrangling the hammer to knock the nail in.

Poirot has had Mr Todd’s cheque for one guinea framed and, as he takes credit away from Miss Lemon who was actually hanging it, points out that the cheque will serve as a reminder that little cases, such as a Search for a Missing Domestic, became solving a Notorious Murder and, in close up, seems duly satisfied – and even the building they are all supposedly inside gets a credit at the end.

And there you have it. The first episode of Agatha Christie’s POIROT TV series – accept no imitations – which ran for seventy episodes over the following half century and brought life into all of the adventures featuring this character written by Agatha Christie herself, and featuring a consistent main cast, which is no small achievement in this day and age.

Other Christie adaptations have come along since, and they too have their fans and are of their time, but for me, THIS is the Poirot that I want, and they made an excellent job of it.

MARTIN A W HOLMES, January 2019

Thursday 28 February 2019

THE COLLECTED RTA DAILY CARTOON (PART FOUR) FEB 2019

Tuesday 12 February 2019

MILTON JOHNS

Sunday 10 February 2019

PODCAST 17 - POIROT

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