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For fans of film, essentially all of Agatha Christie's mysteries featuring the Belgian detective character Hercule Poirot have been adapted by ITV into a fantastic TV series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie's_Poirot
I find it fascinating that they did this series over a span of over 24 years, with the same lead actor (David Suchet, CBE) as Hercule Poirot throughout!
There is a behind the scenes interview with David Suchet reflecting upon the 24 year experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX3ITew9Mpw
"And Then There Were None", which is one of Christie's most famous works not featuring Poirot, has been adapted by the BBC recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None_(mini....
I think the Poirot series is superb, but some of them suffer from stretching the runtime -- the best ones are about 51 minutes long, whereas the longer ones (which includes all of the last few seasons) click in at 1 hour and 29 minutes, some of which are based on short stories, not novels. As delightful as Poirot and his mysteries are, these are also admittedly somewhat shallow, implausible puzzles that rely on acting and cozy English nostalgia to entertain, not deep characterization or touching character arcs. Stretched to two hours, there's often not enough meat to hold one's attention.
David Suchet is a national treasure, though. I wish he would be in more movies and shows.
> the longer ones (which includes all of the last few seasons) click in at 1 hour and 29 minutes, some of which are based on short stories, not novels.
What matters is how much content there is in the episode. People have gotten the idea from Peter Jackson's awful, awful Hobbit movies that pages of source material are a restriction on how much movie you can make. But the problem there was that the movies were terrible, not that The Hobbit was shorter than a three-book series. Shrek is a 90 minute movie based off of a children's book of just 1,150 words. Nobody ever complained about the quality of Shrek.
After rereading the Hobbit, I wanted someone to arrest Peter Jackson for vandalism. It was such an awesome reread!
A personal question to you: Why and in what particular ways do you consider Peter Jackson's renditions of the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to be so awful, awful?
I have enjoyed by stories since I first came across them 40 years ago. I thought that Peter Jackson did an excellent job on retelling the story. In point of fact, retelling it in a way that keeps the essence but is a new variation.
When I first obtained my copy of Lord of the Rings (which I still have), I read it 11 times in 8 months. I still read it when I get the urge. I have found that Peter Jackson has quite a different imaging of the story of the story compared to my own imagining and no less entertaining.
I have had people complain about the "licence" he took in the retelling, about not being true to the original writing. However, a good story teller will add to and change a story to make it more effective for his telling. That is the essence of good story telling - how you choose to emphasise various elements.
Don't get me started... Ah, too late!
The Fellowship of the Ring is an excellent film, pretty consistently following the story while removing confusing elements like Tom Bombadil (some scenes, like the Moria stone troll fight, could have been a bit shorter, but overall it was really amazing).
The Two Towers started showing the early signs os Jackson's "interventionist" approach (which later culminated in the Hobbit films) with adding numerous elements like Aragorn's side trek and Gimli's and Legolas' banter -- but again, it overall added to the story without removing too much of it.
However, with The Return of the King he completely blew it, changing some important elements like Ents' motivations and, above all, the role of the Dead Men of Dunharrow. In the books, they're a formidable but reluctant force which has a strong but limited impact on the story -- they aid Aragorn's attack on the ships, scaring most of the Umbar's forces into drowning and allowing him to increase his army with the captives on the ships, but then he releases them and they never reach Pelennor.
In the film, they are turned to a deus ex machina which sweeps the battlefield and the streets of Minas Tirith, killing all the enemies and not touching the "good guys" (the book shows that the Dead Men scare everyone equally; the "good guys" survive because they are captive and chained to the ships, which probably needed a lot of cleaning afterwards). That scene reminded me of those commercials where a green goo destroys all the toilet bacteria in one powerful sweep -- in my opinion, that change totally destroyed the premise of the book and turned it from "The Return of the King" to "The Return of some Guy with Toilet Cleaner".
/rant
I was just seeing "The Falcon and the Snowman" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087231/?ref_=nv_sr_1) on Hulu, where David Suchet plays the wily Russian agent Alex (his father's side of family is originally from Russia, however in that movie his accent sounded quite British to me).
For some reason I've always personally preferred Miss Marple to Poirot, but again there have been a fine series of adaptations of the Marple books by the BBC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Marple_(TV_series)
When it comes to Poirot I suspect I'm biased, because I love Inspector Morse, both the original books and the excellent ITV adaptation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Morse_(TV_series)
For some reason I started watching Morse before I'd heard of Poirot, and the two styles are very different. I guess I preferred the one I'd seen first! (Although Morse has better music, so that's a win!)
If you haven't already, you should really watch Endeavour, aka 'Young Morse':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endeavour_(TV_series)
It is very, very, good.
I watched the first few episodes, but for some reason I didn't enjoy it.
I will second the sibling comment though; I really enjoyed watching Lewis.
Must admit that I never got into Endeavour, but then I also preferred the Lewis series to Morse :)
Much like Suchet with Poirot, Joan Hickson made Miss Marple her own - Christie wrote to her years before the series was made, hoping that Hickson would one day play the part.
I grew up watching this series and treasure it dearly! To me it is the product of TV in its heyday. Based on a solid foundation, not explicit or overly dramatic to lure viewers, intelligent and family friendly (thanks to the source material) and lovingly produced.
I cannot count how many times I've seen it, and I look forward to share it with any future family I may have
To fans of this and other British crime shows - current and classic - I'd recommend BritBox. It's a collaboration between the BBC and ITV and has some real "mystery" gems [1]. I've no affiliation.
It looks like BritBox only has the first six seasons (series?) of Poirot. For the remaining seasons, you need to go to acorn.tv.
Let's see, can I get it from iTunes? Nope, Apple only sells 7-13 in the U.S. too.
(Still waiting for the video rights holders to learn the same lesson the music rights holders eventually did: if you don't want people to pirate, make it easier to buy it than to steal it.)
I remember being into watching these when they came out first. And then wondering in later years how they were still current while Suchet wasn't aging.
Love seeing this stuff on here. Maybe this reflects poorly on my schooling but I've learned more about literature and philosophy from HN than from anywhere else.
I first discovered Agatha Christie in middle school at a book fair. "The Alphabet Murders". The story twisted in such a way I had never experienced before. I was used to being "smarter than the author" and being able to guess where a story was headed. That experience prompted me to at least 30 of her other books and several collections of short stories. Highly Recommended!
What a terribly written, yet interesting article. Have a look at this torture mascarading as a paragraph:
“But derivative works and adaptations can't fully explain why Christie's work endures. A splendid biography by Laura Thompson, however, does. "Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life" was published in Britain over a decade ago and took an inexplicable amount of time to cross the pond. Yet the timing is perfect because Thompson's thorough yet readable treatment of Christie's life, in combination with artful critical context on her work, arrives at the reason for her endurance..”
For a writer writing about a writer, in the Washington Post no less, one might expect quality beyond that of a high school essay. It’s just ironic because Christie was a great writer. I have yet to find literary criticism that’s actually well written. Perhaps it’s a theory, but it always seems that literary critics are really just failed real writers.
I'm glad I wasn't the only person who thought this. The worst bit for me was "Christie, as Thompson details, came by such understanding through the traditional means of early hardship"... but the "hardship" then isn't explained for another three paragraphs!
The essential Agatha (IMHO):
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Murder on the Orient Express
Curtain
Can't tell you why without spoiling it though. You have to read them.
I would add "And Then There Were None"
Haven't actually read Curtain, I will now immediately go buy it!
Actually, original title by Agatha Christie was "Ten Little Niggers" [1]. I didn't read the book, but I really liked the movie [2] (there is eng subs). People in reviews say it's closest and probably best adaptation. IMO, it's excellent.
In France, the original title is still used ("10 petits nègres").
I read the book, but I did not really enjoyed it. But it was a long time ago, I might have been to Young. Or maybe it was the style, which was very different from what I was used to at the time (mostly Ellis Peters)
While that is true I can't see why it's relevant. You're not going to find it under that title except maybe at an antique book seller.
Why the downvotes? Is this an automated flagging system for the n-word?
Oh yeah, that one too. I didn't put it on my list because, ironically, I never read it. I saw the play when I was a kid so I never bothered to read the book.
> "And Then There Were None"
This is a fascinating book indeed.
While I vastly prefer hardboiled fiction from Chandler and Hammett to the classic Detective Stories, "The Murder of Roger Akroyd" is a brilliant work that I highly recommend to anybody who likes mysteries or detective fiction.
What happened to 10 little Indians (or then there were none). I guess they changed the title for political correctness, unless I'm missing something?
In any case, greatest mystery novel of all time.
It was released in the US as And Then There Were None because the original UK title was, shall we say, significantly more offensive to a US audience than Ten Little Indians would have been. It's not exactly a case of "political correctness." Later, it went through various renaming iterations in the UK.
Also the best selling, proving that the mass market sometimes gets art right. It's Agatha at her most brilliant, ruthless not only in story but in style. The English is as hard and bare as possible. IIRC it's almost all dialog and minimal dialog at that. But you don't notice because the story is such a drug.
It stands apart from her other books by having no familiar characters and being completely sealed. A perfect idea, perfectly executed. I wonder if Nabokov ever read it.
After you read "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", I recommend "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" by Pierre Bayard. (spoiler alert: Please don't Google this book until you have read the Christie.)
Bayard writes "revisionist readings" of popular mysteries, in which he exonerates the killers. He mixes in a fair amount of literary criticism. I have a hard time deciding how serious he is.
One obscure one that I remember enjoying and thinking was underrated was "Dumb Witness".
I think I've read every single Poirot, my favorites are:
Murder on the Orient Express
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Cat Among Pigeons
I'll have to see curtain to my list, then. I'll second the first two. Very fun novels. Haven't seen the new movie. Guessing it is ok, but different. At best.
>Haven't seen the new movie. Guessing it is ok, but different. At best.
I assume you mean Murder on the Orient Express? IMO, it was "OK." Perfectly serviceable and, had there not been an earlier film version, I'd have said it was perfectly fine if nothing outstanding. But I found basically nothing that I thought was better than the 70s version and a number of things that weren't as good. If I were to watch one, I'd watch the older version even today.
I watched the Branagh film on a recent flight.
It's... OK, I guess. I'd recommend anyone who wants to see it read the book first. The twist is preserved, but in the film doesn't work quite as well.
The basic problem (for those who are curious) is that the book takes you there through a couple iterations of Poirot interviewing the passengers, and showing exactly how he teases out each little piece of information that finally causes the truth to pop out at the end. The film, constrained by running-time concerns, can't do that, so several things that are separate and gradual revelations in the book are part of one big reveal.
A lot of the fun of the book (for me, at least) is the series of small shocks as he goes through the initial set of interviews and comes away with nothing, then figures out the pieces of the puzzle, confronts other people with them in later interviews, and explains how he worked them out from previous clues. That gives the eventual solution of the murder an entirely different feel.
There's also the usual amount of gratuitous deviation from the source in adding a bit of action and fiddling with characters, which also detracts a bit. The worst of it is that the moment when Poirot's solution is finally confirmed -- which is done in the book with a wonderful single sentence uttered by one passenger -- was changed entirely and became much more cruel than the book, in a way that deviates from how Christie usually presents Poirot's character.
The whole way that Poirot/Branagh acted around the reveal and afterwards differed quite a bit from the 70s film as well. It's the main thing that knocks this version down at least a notch for me.
I highly recommend Agatha Christie's autobiography. Reading in was a happy experience for me. The descriptions of the Middle East in the early 20th century are also interesting.
NYT did an article last year summarizing what's been adapted to screen and where to find it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/watching/agatha-christie-...
I do wish though that there was greater space in public imagination for works of Hammett and Chandler, and writers of their ilk. I find hardly any new adaptations of their works being made these days.
Read the Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon; heavily influenced by Chandler and one of the most spectacular detective stories ever.
I grew up with Poirot books (thanks dad!), and have always been delighted with the movies and series featuring David Suchet. He is such a great actor, there is no one else that can impersonate Poirot like he does.
The new movie is just.... meh. Poirot(the character) has been holywood-ized for the masses... lost all the charm for me.
Thanks! We've changed to that from https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-great....