New photo CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The ABC Murders

Christie at Christmas – nothing is more satisfying than a blood-soaked trail of bodies when you’re digesting the last of the brandy pudding. 

But this year there is a problem as tangled as any penned by Dame Agatha – how does the BBC solve the Suchet Dilemma?

That is, how can any actor attempt to portray Poirot, when David Suchet did the entire canon, every novel and just about every short story, with an aplomb that amounted to perfection?

Kenneth Branagh tried last year to out-Poirot him, with a ridiculous Pink Panther accent and a moustache that belonged on a Victorian ringmaster. That didn’t work.

The ABC Murders (BBC1) presented Hercule Poirot as an ancient, white-haired relic – forgotten by the public

Actor John Malkovich plays the great detective in the BBC 1 that will air on three consecutive nights this Christmas

Taking a boldly different angle, The ABC Murders (BBC1) presented Hercule Poirot as an ancient, white-haired relic – forgotten by the public, despised by a new generation at Scotland Yard, living alone in a lonely London flat.

John Malkovich as the great detective didn’t even have those trademark waxed moustachios … just a white goatee, which he dyed with a toothbrush and hair oil. 

This look wasn’t a great success: ‘You look like you’re melting,’ sneered the snide Inspector Crome (Rupert Grint).

So how will viewers rank Malkovich in the grand cavalcade of actors to tackle the role? How does he compare to an Albert Finney, a Peter Ustinov, even an Alfred Molina?

Not too well, I’m afraid. It’s not his fault that he’s a foot too tall – Poirot is meant to be a little man – but he lacks the detective’s blithe arrogance and cocky impishness. And though the accent may be authentically Belgian, it doesn’t have that magical sense of drama.

Poirot should always sound like a conjuror about to produce a homicidal rabbit from a top hat in a vicar’s conservatory.

So how will viewers rank Malkovich in the grand cavalcade of actors to tackle the role? How does he compare to an Albert Finney, a Peter Ustinov, even an Alfred Molina?

Equally jarring, this story was set at the height of crime fiction’s Golden Age, when Poirot was generally regarded as being at his zenith. 

Every aficionado knows that in the mid-Thirties he was solving murders for the crowned heads of Europe, dashing between their palaces on the Orient Express, before nipping off to Egypt for a spot of dinner and death on the Nile.

According to this remake, Poirot had fallen so out of fashion that people didn’t even turn up to his murder-mystery parties at country hotels. 

You could argue that not every viewer cares whether telly adaptations respect the original books. 

Malkovich's character is forgotten by the public, despised by a new generation at Scotland Yard and living alone in a lonely London flat

But earlier this year, when the writer of this drama, Sarah Phelps, dared to change the ending of Ordeal By Innocence (a much more minor Christie novel), angry fans were ready to march on New Broadcasting House with pitchforks and burning torches.

Speaking of pitchforks and mobs, there was a splash of Brexit controversy introduced here, too, with an ugly political backdrop to the tale. 

Our Belgian sleuth was the epitome of everything good about Europe, but a nasty faction in Britain didn’t want him over here.

They waved hateful placards and plastered the walls with racist graffiti. Monsieur Poirot was unwelcome in the very land he’d done so much to help. 

It might be that the Beeb couldn’t resist shoehorning a modern-day agenda into the plot – boo hiss for Brexit! – though it could equally be argued that Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts were on the march in the Thirties and any man with a foreign accent as exaggerated as Poirot’s might easily feel uncomfortable.

Despite all this adaptation’s drawbacks and failings, there can be no complaints about the staging of the story – hence its four stars. 

Based on the books by Agatha Christie, the drama stars John Malkovich and Rupert Grint

A grim vision of the Depression era was created, with railway lines twisting through smog and waitresses flirting with customers in shabby seaside cafes in exchange for gifts of nylons.

This was a boldly visual version of one of Dame Agatha’s cleverest mysteries. 

The camera work was full of intriguing tricks: we saw Poirot in the faded reflections of carriage windows, and viewed upside-down through a magnifying glass. 

One beautiful overhead drone shot watched a steam train far below, inching down the landscape like a raindrop on a windowpane.

We were not spared the bloody details of the murders either. 

One woman was almost decapitated with a blunt razor – a crime that prompted one of Poirot’s succinct summaries of who the killer could and couldn’t be. 

And a girl’s body was discovered in a chilly beachfront hut, throttled with her own stocking till her eyeballs bulged.

One of the best touches was the sound of the murderer’s typewriter, as its keys bashed out taunting notes to the detective. 

Each letter landed with a noise like a gunshot, and every full stop sounded a hollow boom, as though coffin nails were being banged in. 

This soundtrack was used constantly, and at loud volume, until by the end of the hour my nerves were wound tight – a clever if ruthless technique.

As always with Christie, the screen buzzed with characters, many of them played by major names: Andrew Buchan, Tara Fitzgerald, Gregor Fisher, Jack Farthing, Suzanne Packer. That’s stars of Broadchurch, Game Of Thrones, Rab C. Nesbitt, Poldark and Casualty, all in one stately home.

But the best sub-plot went to Grint as the bitter Scotland Yard detective threatening to uncover Poirot’s past and expose him as a fraud.

Which is a good point. In all the Poirot tales – 33 novels, more than 50 short stories and a play – we learn next to nothing about the little man’s background, other than that he retired from the Belgian police and came to live in Britain after the First World War.

In one story, he mentioned a sister near Brussels … but she was erased in later reprints. Evidently, Miss Christie wanted to keep Poirot’s past a secret.

But why? Perhaps we are finally about to find out.

 

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News Pictures CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The ABC Murders 

You don’t have to pack away your bikini just because you’re the wrong side of 20. These body-beautiful stars reveal their secrets to staying in shape and prove you can smoulder in a two-piece, whatever your age. Read on and be bikini inspired!

TEENS
Hayden Panettiere
Size: 8
Age: 18
Height: 5ft 1in
Weight: 8st

To achieve her kick-ass figure, Hayden – who plays cheerleader Claire Bennet in Heroes – follows the ‘quartering’ rule. She eats only a quarter of the food on her plate, then waits 20 minutes before deciding whether she needs to eat again.

Hayden says: “I don’t have a model’s body, but I’m not one of those crazy girls who thinks that they’re fat. I’m OK with what I have.”

Nicollette says: “I don’t like diets – I see it, I eat it! I believe in eating healthily with lots of protein, vegetables and carbs to give you energy.”

kim cattrall

Size: 10-12
Age: 52
Height: 5ft 8in
Weight: 9st 4lb

SATC star Kim swears by gym sessions with Russian kettle bells (traditional cast-iron weights) and the South Beach Diet to give her the body she wants. To avoid overeating, Kim has a radical diet trick – squirting lemon juice on her leftovers – so she won’t carry on picking.

Kim says: “I am no super-thin Hollywood actress. I am built for men who like women to look like women.”
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