Sep 30, 2020
Hercule Poirot: The 100-Year-Old Character We Still Love
Agatha Christie’s famous detective first appeared in 1920
When Agatha Christie first published her detective novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, I doubt even the Queen of Crime herself could have guessed we’d still be reading about him in 2020.
Although Christie’s books are still hot items — more than two million copies of them were sold in 2019 — audiences have also clearly shown they love Christie in TV and movie adaptation form. In addition to Poirot, Christie also created the beloved character of Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster amateur sleuth who listens more than she talks and who plumbs her “mind like a sink” to discover the culprits in a number of stories, all of which have been adapted, many times over, as both TV series and films.
But the best known of all the Christie adaptations may still very well be those starring David Suchet as Poirot. Suchet played Poirot in no fewer than seventy episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. The entire series ran for thirteen seasons over the course of twenty-four years (1989 to 2013). Because Suchet himself aged over the filming of the series, the viewer has the uncanny sense that they are actually watching a real-life detective move through his career.
The show itself also changed over time; after series eight (after 2003), new writers took over from the old and brought a darker tone to the adaptations. Suchet as Poirot had a definite twinkle in his eye in the early seasons; in the later seasons he appeared more worn down by his cases and the crimes. Throughout, Suchet took the role seriously and attacked it like the method actor he is. In his early days of playing the role he “read every short story, every book,” in which Poirot appeared, and took notes.
But Suchet has not been the only actor to bring persnickety but brilliant Hercule Poirot to life. Russian-English actor Peter Ustinov also played him in three movies and three made-for-TV specials (which mostly aired in the 1980s). Although Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks was evidently not a fan of his portrayal, there’s a lot of fun to be had watching Ustinov in these (now seemingly ancient) adaptations.
For one thing, he’s got a lovely mustache, and that lovingly tended and curled mustache is one of the best-known hallmarks of the Poirot character. For another, he’s a bit of a rogue. Ustinov’s Poirot eavesdrops, and is clearly able to think clearly, and is not above suggesting to certain other characters that perhaps vengeance is a dangerous object to pursue. Another character quirk of Christie’s Poirot was that he took his food (and its prompt delivery and perfect presentation) seriously; Ustinov’s Poirot shows this by being decidedly tetchy about when his meals will be served and making remarks about the quality of the drinks he is served.
As an aside: perhaps my favorite moment in all of these varied adaptations is in Death on the Nile, starring Ustinov, in which a young Dame Maggie Smith (yes, you may remember her as Violet Crawley on Downton Abbey) upstages Poirot’s characteristic bluntness by making this observation: “It’s been my experience that men are least attracted to women who treat them well.”
Suchet and Ustinov have not been the only well-known actors to slip into the Hercule Poirot persona: John Malkovich also took a turn as the brilliant sleuth in the 2018 adaptation of The ABC Murders. This was the darkest adaptation of Christie’s source material yet, with many reviewers not entirely sure they liked it. Most agreed, however, that Malkovich’s performance was strong. As of 2020, however, there are no reports that Malkovich (or the BBC) are considering any more adaptations starring him as Poirot.
If you believe in the maxim that the best Agatha Christie adaptation is the one that you get to see next, you may well think that Kenneth Branagh’s next film, another remake of Death on the Nile, is going to be the best.
The film is set to open this December, and follows on the heels of the first adaptation he directed and starred in, in 2017: Murder on the Orient Express. That movie did well in theaters, although the reception to Death on the Nile may be muted by the continuing pandemic. (Of which we will not speak, because as much as I don’t want to sit in enclosed spaces with other people, I really, really want to go see this movie, AND the new James Bond, in November. But I digress.)
So: Happy Birthday, Hercule Poirot. You and your brilliant creator are still high on our lists of reading (and watching) pleasures.
