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
- 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!
It’s Poirot!
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 8th 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
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