The ABC Murders - 2/3 and 3/3
Episode 2
Jack Farthing is in danger of getting typecast, no?
With ‘C’, we wandered back into country house murder territory, with Franklyn seeming like far too decent a chap for the grasping secretary, who misplayed her hand with his brother. Poirot and ‘the birthday game’ seemed too grisly for words, especially after his speech, although I suppose the point is that we are an audience to murder turned entertainment, and Malkovich and Fitzgerald and Lady Hermione’s plight showed that none can escape death - sudden and violent, or slow and bloody. Making Thora’s self-centeredness even worse. Although after The Callous Makeover she’d set the bar high.
But, at this point, I am not ruling Thora or Franklyn out of involvement.
Poirot finally got around to investigating his connection to the murders’ locations, although he handled the first interview with relatives etc badly. But not as badly as Inspector Crome, who had a (stupid) theory - it was sexually motivated! Never mind the time when it clearly wasn’t!! Having said that, even if I hadn’t seen the murderer already, wouldn’t the physicality of the A and C murders suggest it was more likely to be a man? And then they bonded over what the nasty press was saying about them (back to J.K. Rowling again) and…Crome had another theory that he rode hard (and wrongly) despite Poirot’s arguments.
And yeah - we all checked - I didn’t think Cust’s secret was that he was born a woman. The puking and the fitting suggest he was physically ill too.
The point about racism being worse than rudeness was made, with a black priest to go with the black faithful retainer.
I did get exasperated by the repeated use of the flashback, each time with one…more…detail. Was Hercule Poirot really a police officer in the past, or a gynaecologist? The last flashback and letter from ABC suggested that ‘Hercule Poirot’ had taken up the name and identity. I want him to be what he says he is, at heart, though.
Certainly, the question about whether he felt he wasn’t enough was the timing - was it over this string of murders or something from the past?
The ventriloquist’s dummy was, of course, creepy. So, sometimes it’s atmospheric, but sometimes it plods.
Episode 3
And sometimes it was creaky.
Cust had a seizure at the E murder scene and the net closed around him, but Lily remained loyal. Actually, suddenly, his line about the wrongness of murder in the previous instalment rang out.
Okay, it became obvious it wasn’t him because there was too much of the episode left to run. What I’d assumed was him fighting against time became him being the pasty for the real killer, who apparently came up with it over a game of backgammon.
Crome thought he had his man, Poirot was not so sure. And suddenly the old question of who stood to gain became more vital. Franklyn or his future wife (who woke up and put some make-up on for breakfast and sex, which is a choice.)
So, I got to say ‘I told you so’ and watch as Andrew Buchan’s Franklyn dropped the decent chap façade to become the twisted obsessive who wanted to make his last meeting with Poirot homoerotically charged. He didn’t get very far with Poirot - I actually liked that Poirot didn’t deviate from the point that Franklyn killed all those people and would have killed more. After all, Lady Hermione and the other guests didn’t turn into killers.
Hearing the sound effect of the rope didn’t work for me, I could not get past the fact that Poirot wouldn’t have been able to hear it. I don’t care if it was meant to be symbolic.
Poirot 1, Crome 0.
There were some nice moments for minor women characters - Thora Grey, having been pitied by Poirot, making the most of what she’d got left after being bribed to abet a serial killer; the sister listening to Betty’s ghost and walking away from a toxic domestic set-up; and Lily waiting for Cust after he’d had treatment, probably because he’d only made her walk on his back and cause her pain. Only that.
I had sussed that Poirot had been a priest because of ‘mes enfants’ - Malkovich made a good job of sounding a false note with the fake explanation. For me, there were echoes of Black Earth Rising when we finally - FINALLY - got to see the flashback in full. It’s a choice. I personally prefer Poirot always being a police officer, like in the books, but I’m not so hardcore that I’m going to quibble with their choice to make that change, because we have had ITV adapting all the novels quite faithfully, so they needed to go in a different direction. Having said that, what happened outside and in the church doesn’t quite track as an origin story for a justice-seeker for me.
I also don’t get why Poirot answered English questions in French in 1914 - it just seemed weird. And, well, maybe Malkovich’s Belgian-accented French sounded really convincing to Belgians.
Overall, I feel satisfied with the way it wasn’t Cust, as we were led to believe for so long, but bits of it were very pointedly from 2018 (the stance on immigration) and others were as old as variety. It wasn’t as unremittingly nasty as ‘Ordeal by Innocence’ and ‘Witness for the Prosecution’, though it was nasty. I know Christie is nasty, but when you’re also being quite graphic with the violence and gore, it’s a bit much.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/365874.html.
Jack Farthing is in danger of getting typecast, no?
With ‘C’, we wandered back into country house murder territory, with Franklyn seeming like far too decent a chap for the grasping secretary, who misplayed her hand with his brother. Poirot and ‘the birthday game’ seemed too grisly for words, especially after his speech, although I suppose the point is that we are an audience to murder turned entertainment, and Malkovich and Fitzgerald and Lady Hermione’s plight showed that none can escape death - sudden and violent, or slow and bloody. Making Thora’s self-centeredness even worse. Although after The Callous Makeover she’d set the bar high.
But, at this point, I am not ruling Thora or Franklyn out of involvement.
Poirot finally got around to investigating his connection to the murders’ locations, although he handled the first interview with relatives etc badly. But not as badly as Inspector Crome, who had a (stupid) theory - it was sexually motivated! Never mind the time when it clearly wasn’t!! Having said that, even if I hadn’t seen the murderer already, wouldn’t the physicality of the A and C murders suggest it was more likely to be a man? And then they bonded over what the nasty press was saying about them (back to J.K. Rowling again) and…Crome had another theory that he rode hard (and wrongly) despite Poirot’s arguments.
And yeah - we all checked - I didn’t think Cust’s secret was that he was born a woman. The puking and the fitting suggest he was physically ill too.
The point about racism being worse than rudeness was made, with a black priest to go with the black faithful retainer.
I did get exasperated by the repeated use of the flashback, each time with one…more…detail. Was Hercule Poirot really a police officer in the past, or a gynaecologist? The last flashback and letter from ABC suggested that ‘Hercule Poirot’ had taken up the name and identity. I want him to be what he says he is, at heart, though.
Certainly, the question about whether he felt he wasn’t enough was the timing - was it over this string of murders or something from the past?
The ventriloquist’s dummy was, of course, creepy. So, sometimes it’s atmospheric, but sometimes it plods.
Episode 3
And sometimes it was creaky.
Cust had a seizure at the E murder scene and the net closed around him, but Lily remained loyal. Actually, suddenly, his line about the wrongness of murder in the previous instalment rang out.
Okay, it became obvious it wasn’t him because there was too much of the episode left to run. What I’d assumed was him fighting against time became him being the pasty for the real killer, who apparently came up with it over a game of backgammon.
Crome thought he had his man, Poirot was not so sure. And suddenly the old question of who stood to gain became more vital. Franklyn or his future wife (who woke up and put some make-up on for breakfast and sex, which is a choice.)
So, I got to say ‘I told you so’ and watch as Andrew Buchan’s Franklyn dropped the decent chap façade to become the twisted obsessive who wanted to make his last meeting with Poirot homoerotically charged. He didn’t get very far with Poirot - I actually liked that Poirot didn’t deviate from the point that Franklyn killed all those people and would have killed more. After all, Lady Hermione and the other guests didn’t turn into killers.
Hearing the sound effect of the rope didn’t work for me, I could not get past the fact that Poirot wouldn’t have been able to hear it. I don’t care if it was meant to be symbolic.
Poirot 1, Crome 0.
There were some nice moments for minor women characters - Thora Grey, having been pitied by Poirot, making the most of what she’d got left after being bribed to abet a serial killer; the sister listening to Betty’s ghost and walking away from a toxic domestic set-up; and Lily waiting for Cust after he’d had treatment, probably because he’d only made her walk on his back and cause her pain. Only that.
I had sussed that Poirot had been a priest because of ‘mes enfants’ - Malkovich made a good job of sounding a false note with the fake explanation. For me, there were echoes of Black Earth Rising when we finally - FINALLY - got to see the flashback in full. It’s a choice. I personally prefer Poirot always being a police officer, like in the books, but I’m not so hardcore that I’m going to quibble with their choice to make that change, because we have had ITV adapting all the novels quite faithfully, so they needed to go in a different direction. Having said that, what happened outside and in the church doesn’t quite track as an origin story for a justice-seeker for me.
I also don’t get why Poirot answered English questions in French in 1914 - it just seemed weird. And, well, maybe Malkovich’s Belgian-accented French sounded really convincing to Belgians.
Overall, I feel satisfied with the way it wasn’t Cust, as we were led to believe for so long, but bits of it were very pointedly from 2018 (the stance on immigration) and others were as old as variety. It wasn’t as unremittingly nasty as ‘Ordeal by Innocence’ and ‘Witness for the Prosecution’, though it was nasty. I know Christie is nasty, but when you’re also being quite graphic with the violence and gore, it’s a bit much.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/365874.html.