Lockdown, Lowdown From Scotland… – Let’s Talk About The Belgian Detective Hercule Poirot

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

The gait, the walk, the twiddling of the moustache. The use of the little grey cells.

For many of us, the epitome of the Belgian detective – he is NOT French – came in the shape and mannerisms of one David Suchet. There had been many incantations of one Hercule Poirot, the ill-fated film version with Peter Ustinov being one of them or the suave and sophisticated David Niven playing him in the spoof Murder by Death but for us all, Suchet captured him with style.

I was a major fan of the books and read them avidly. I have no idea if I have managed to read every one of them, but I know that I had read enough to see in my mind’s eye just exactly how he should be played. The one I had definitely not read, was the final one in the series to be filmed and broadcast by Suchet – Curtain: Poirot’s last case.

In it, Poirot is dying. Convalescing in the place where it all began, three decades before in the Mysterious Affair at Styles – Styles, his genius is to be finally tested and found to be what it always was – sat perfectly in a perfect mind, though now in a decaying body.

For Suchet it was his last time donning the moustache and represented the end of his filming the entire cannon of Poirot cases. It was his 13th season and his fifth broadcast of that series. It represents a remarkable piece of work. Even before lockdown, I was making my way through re-watching them.

Suchet performs with the ticks and the mannerisms we had read about so wonderfully in the novels. The arrogance and assuredness comes across with elegance and a beauty that captures you from the very first infuriating encounter. The problem for him in his final performance is that he is now wheelchair bound and caught up in a final murder that he has to leave to his famed and slightly less than perfect sidekick Hastings.

As well as Poirot, the success of the stories depends upon the abilities and relationships between Poirot and both Hastings and the good, Inspector Japp.

Rarely has casting been so magnificently done.

Hastings, a slight caricature of the English aristocracy has always brought those actors who had a slight upper class twang to their speech to the casting table. But Hastings is so much more. His naivete, enthusiasm and lack of luck in love and business round him off to be one of the best sidekicks because he is the perfect balance to the man he attends.

Hugh Fraser caught it all perfectly. With the final case at Styles, the loss he feels at the death of Poirot, is mitigated by the shenanigans that Poirot sets in motion to solve the case. In essence the beauty of the piece is the fact that, rather than condemn Hastings as an idiot or a man who should be looked down upon, Poirot has such affection for him that he knows his foibles will be an advantage in delivering the final coup de grace.

In Japp, we got the wonderful Phillip Jackson, who also managed to play Japp in some of the BBC radio adaptations where John Moffatt played Poirot. Poirot also loves the good Inspector Japp and though he was not involved in the final case, his presence throughout as well as Miss Lemon, played to perfection by Pauline Moran. Miss Lemon one of the ancillary characters who attended Poirot and the final moments of the series were poignant for the actors, I am sure, as they were for us as audience and critics.

The series was reverential in its approach but not overly so. It had the ability to play with the form and though the Estate of Christie have on a few occasions suggested that Suchet had the character pitch perfect as to the books, we as the audience also welcomed him as the epitome of the little Belgian like no other.

Recently Poirot has had a very decent makeover with John Malkovich managing a brilliant Poirot, and Kenneth Branagh taking the moustache to greater heights, and lengths, but for all of us Suchet IS the man from the books.

But he is not the only one.

The BBC radio series which stars John Moffatt has the quirks vocally and the adaptations on point. I never thought I would accept anyone else as a “straight” Poirot. The interpretation I have listened has managed to convince me that a character of Poirot’s strength can take others having their own ways of playing him. It is never so true than in the BBC adaptations with Moffatt.

Both the treats for the ears and for the eyes can be found through the BBC and I, for one, shall revisit them, again and again.

An author’s note…

British television is a curious affair. Begun through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) it is funded through the universal license fee. In essence, if you wanted to watch the television , you had to pay the license fee. The BBC got it all and is state run, albeit at arms-length. Then came along commercial television in the form of the Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. Designed to bring a bit of competition to the BBC, it was paid for through advertising but still free to air… well they didn’t add another license fee to it. By the time that I was born, 1965, there was BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. And that was it. It was still years before Bruce Springsteen would moan that there were 55 channels and nothing on but here in the UK, we kept this going until in 1982, we added a fourth channel and in 1997, a fifth. With sparkling imagination, they were called Channel Four and ehm Channel Five… In between came Sky and we understood what Springsteen meant.

And so, my childhood and leading up to early adulthood we had three options… But the programs made were exceptionally good. And so, here is some critical nostalgia as the lockdown has brought a plethora of reruns, new formats and platforms and old classics trying to make their way back into our consciousness as broadcasters flood their schedules with classics… or are they classics at all? Let me take you through an armchair critics’ view of what we have to see, to find out… Welcome to the Lockdown Lowdown…

[si-contact-form form=’2′]