Best David Suchet Adaptation in your opinion

purplebekir88

I recently watched every episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot and I have to say I really enjoyed most of it.My favorites were Yellow Iris,The Chocolate Box,Five Little Pigs(My favorite of the bunch),Sad Cypress,The Hollow,After the Funeral,Mrs McGinty's Dead,Third Girl,Hallowe'en Party,The Clocks,Elephants Can Remember,Dead Man's Folly,and Curtain.The only adaptation I found abysmal was Card's on the Table which is one of my favorite Christie's.
Would love to hear what your favorites are.

tudes

I agree with you, except Curtain and Third Girl (but I'm not very found of this book). I didn't like it very much. 
I also like The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Lord Edgware Dies very much.  
I think the short stories adaptations were much better than the novels. For instance, Appointment with Death, Cards on the table (the worst one, this marvelous book deserves a better adaptation), The Labors of Hercules were awful.

ChristieFanForLife

tudes said:

The Labors of Hercules were awful.

The Labours of Hercules should have been done as a series of 1-hour episodes and yet still remain with the same concept that Christie came up with for this collection. It's like they wanted to rush and get the series over with just to say that they got it done. A lot of the later episodes could have been done much better than they were. Quality trumps quantity in my opinion. There were a small number of gems from the later series but there could have been so much more if the quality weren't so uneven. From the later series the best ones were: Five Little Pigs, Sad Cypress, The Hollow, After The Funeral. The worst ones, the really worst ones were Appointment With Death, Murder On The Orient Express, Taken At The Flood, The Labours of Hercules, The Mystery of the Blue Train. Three Act Tragedy, Halloween Party, Cards On The Table (the beginning was okay but the ending and the plot twist change is atrocious!) and Curtain (could have been SO MUCH better, considering this is the LAST story in the series!) are subpar. I will have to watch Mrs. McGinty's Dead and Cat Among The Pigeons again to recollect my memories of my opinions of them. I still need to watch The Clocks, Elephants Can Remember, Third Girl, Dead Man's Folly and The Big Four -- this will be my first time watching these.

purplebekir88

I forgot Appointment With Death it was also abysmal

ChristieFanForLife

purplebekir88 said:

I forgot Appointment With Death it was also abysmal

I can't see why they didn't remain faithful to the book. What made the book so memorable is that first line, "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" and I don't recall that line in the film. Shame on them!

tudes

The Mystery of the Blue Train, what was that? The story isn't so good, but the movie is a waste of time and money. It's pointless.

ChristieFanForLife

tudes said:

I agree with you, except Curtain and Third Girl (but I'm not very found of this book). I didn't like it very much. 
I also like The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Lord Edgware Dies very much.  
I think the short stories adaptations were much better than the novels. For instance, Appointment with Death, Cards on the table (the worst one, this marvelous book deserves a better adaptation), The Labors of Hercules were awful.

I like Lord Edgware Dies but looking back now, did we really need the chase scene? I noticed a lot of the episodes in the series had chase scenes. Maybe if they weren't done so much I wouldn't have had a problem with this one. But other then that it was a good film. I do have to say that although Helen Grace was great as Lady Edgware, I now believe that Faye Dunaway from the 80s version with Peter Ustinov, is a bit more like the character from the book. 

tudes

ChristieFanForLife said:

tudes said:

I agree with you, except Curtain and Third Girl (but I'm not very found of this book). I didn't like it very much. 
I also like The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Lord Edgware Dies very much.  
I think the short stories adaptations were much better than the novels. For instance, Appointment with Death, Cards on the table (the worst one, this marvelous book deserves a better adaptation), The Labors of Hercules were awful.

I like Lord Edgware Dies but looking back now, did we really need the chase scene? I noticed a lot of the episodes in the series had chase scenes. Maybe if they weren't done so much I wouldn't have had a problem with this one. But other then that it was a good film. I do have to say that although Helen Grace was great as Lady Edgware, I now believe that Faye Dunaway from the 80s version with Peter Ustinov, is a bit more like the character from the book. 

You're right. The chase scene is a problem. It's so unnecessary. But I think it's a great movie. Much better than others adaptations. 
Although I think Suchet is "the Poirot", I like much more the 80s versions with Ustinov. The new versions, even the good ones (not all of them, of course), they have so many things happening at the same time. It's so far from the original story and it's unnecessary. 
I like them both (Helen Grace and Faye Dunaway), but when I image Lady Edgware, it's Faye Dunaway that comes to my mind.

CrookedQuin

Five Little Pigs and The ABC Murders are the first that come to mind. They were both tonally consistent and provided great acting, great writing, and great pacing at no expense. I don't think their are any that are bad per se, but are bland or don't work well. 

A problem with the later episodes is the confined running time. In Dead Man's Folly, none of the characters really get to develop enough to form a connection with. Some of the earlier episodes are extended, and the short stories can be told in half the amount of time they gave the series then, which coerced the writers into adding unnecessary plot lines, forced humor, or complicating it to extremes. 

However, they usually all showcase top-notch acting and when they follow the source material, they can entail an entertaining experience. 

Tommy_A_Jones

I think the whose of the last series was a waste of time and Pointless, OK it was nice Zoe Wanemaker had one last HURRAH in Dead Man's Folly and it was nice to see Philip ackson again and the woman who played Miss Lemon (Sorry Can't remember her First name) and It was nice to see Hugh Fraser again but I could have lived Happily without those Episodes and Appointment With Death, Murder On The Orient Express, Five Little Pigs and Sad Cypress I could have lived without.

Tommy_A_Jones

 it.I would like to Add Cards On The Table, As they did such a bad job I would have rather they hadn't adapted one of my Favourite Christie's if it meant ruining

GKCfan

Looking just at the one-hour episodes, which are your favorites?  My favorites are "Clapham Cook" and "Veiled Lady" because of their humor, and "Plymouth Express" out of sentiment– it was the first episode of Poirot I ever saw.

My least favorite?  "Missing Will," because it's so different from the original story.

CrookedQuin

"The Chocolate Box," is my favorite for one hour episodes.

"The Adventure of Johnny Waverly," is my least favorite of the one hour episodes.

P_Lombard

ChristieFanForLife said:

The worst ones, the really worst ones were Appointment With Death, Murder On The Orient Express, Taken At The Flood, The Labours of Hercules, The Mystery of the Blue Train. Three Act Tragedy, Halloween Party, Cards On The Table (the beginning was okay but the ending and the plot twist change is atrocious!) and Curtain (could have been SO MUCH better, considering this is the LAST story in the series!) are subpar. I will have to watch Mrs. McGinty's Dead and Cat Among The Pigeons again to recollect my memories of my opinions of them. I still need to watch The Clocks, Elephants Can Remember, Third Girl, Dead Man's Folly and The Big Four -- this will be my first time watching these.

I agree with you 100% about the adaptations of Appointment with Death, Murder on the Orient Express, Taken at the Flood, Labours of Hercules, and Cards on the Table. All of these movies took extreme liberties that mutilated the original plots, introduced unnecessarily dark and unpleasant elements, and distorted the principal characters (with the exception of Ariadne Oliver in Cards on the Table, who is the only redeeming aspect of this travesty).

However, I must respectfully disagree with you regarding Three Act Tragedy, which is one of my favorite movie adaptations. The filming is very theatrical, which works very well with the story. I felt the movie did an excellent job of condensing the novel while staying faithful to the original story. They also did an excellent job making the ending appropriately, powerfully emotional. 

Some of my favorite David Suchet adaptations include Death on the Nile, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder on the Links, Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Three Act Tragedy, Five Little Pigs, and One, Two Buckle my Shoe.

ChristieFanForLife

P_Lombard said:

However, I must respectfully disagree with you regarding Three Act Tragedy, which is one of my favorite movie adaptations. The filming is very theatrical, which works very well with the story. I felt the movie did an excellent job of condensing the novel while staying faithful to the original story. They also did an excellent job making the ending appropriately, powerfully emotional. 

Some of my favorite David Suchet adaptations include Death on the Nile, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder on the Links, Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Three Act Tragedy, Five Little Pigs, and One, Two Buckle my Shoe.

There's something about the Three Act Tragedy adaptation that makes it subpar in my eyes and I can't put my finger on it at the moment. Maybe it was the direction, the acting, the lack of character development, the film's length. I need to re-watch it again to get a definite answer. First I'm going to re-read the book, then watch the film again. I don't know when I'll be able to do both but they are on my "to do list". 

David Suchet's adaptation of Death On The Nile was good in some ways but overall, I was a bit disappointed with the film and felt that the Peter Ustinov version was better, though it had its flaws. Of course, the book will always be better! As to the film, I think the length of the Ustinov version was more suitable for such a story like this. I always felt DOTN is an event and Agatha Christie certainly made it appear as such, especially with the book's length, which is one of Christie's longest mysteries she ever wrote.

ChristieFanForLife

GKCfan said:

My least favorite?  "Missing Will," because it's so different from the original story.

The Case of The Missing Will doesn't contain a murder as the adaptation does. That's what makes the written story dramatically different from most of Christie's stories. There's usually a murder but in rare cases like this, Missing Will is focused on a nice, clean yet complicated puzzle without a body. But this story demonstrates that Poirot doesn't always have to use his little grey cells on a murder. Poirot is into the "puzzle" aspect, regardless of whether it involves a body or not. It's matching his wits against a problem and taking full credit in solving it. 

Tommy_A_Jones

Ince Love The Missing Will, I was so disappointed the Adaptation had to be Padded out and a Murder Added, It ruined for me what was a lovely little Short Story, I think ITV improved most of the Short stories and ruined that one, The should have combined it with the Le Messurier Inherritence which I don't think was done.