The Big Four SPOILER ALERT

glalonzo0408

Oh my....I just watched this on PBS and I did not care for it at all.....I found it to be boring and the story line was very haphazard.  What confused me the most was WHERE DID HASTINGS GO???  After Poirot "Died" he took off saying he was going to finish what Poirot started....then we didn't see him til the very end...Admittedly I have not read the book....is it explained in the book where he went?  

On another note...I couldn't get over how old Jap, Miss Lemon, and Hastings looked....it's sad....

mike1410

The Big Four was probably not an easy novel to adapt for television, since it was originally a series of short stories that were later compiled into one novel and does, therefore, have a fairly complex plot line. I wonder if that was one of the reasons why it was left so late to film, and why it was so very heavily edited in the process?. In chronological order the book was the only the fifth of the 40+ Poirot stories that were written, yet it was one of the last four to be adapted. The book is a much better read than the television adaptation would have you believe, and I recommend anyone who has not read it to do so, if only for the opportunity to meet Poirot's twin brother Achille!  In the book, Captain Hastings never actually disappears, since he is the narrator - that was rather a messy edit to suit the purposes of the film.

As for the aging of the cast, well I suppose that's inevitable when you film over a period of 25 years (although the television adaptations are all set in the 1930's) with the same actors. The ITV adaptations do write Miss Lemon and Inspector Japp into far more stories than they actually appear and whilst Miss Lemon does not appear in the novel of The Big Four, I think it was fitting to get all four of the main characters together on film for one last time.

Tommy_A_Jones

In a perfect world the Stories would have been done chronologically but if as it seemed to me they had to do two set in England to subsidise the paying of Foreign ones I can understand it, but when they did come to it they could have done it closer to the book than it was and they could have taken the opportunity of Filming diiferent Episodes at once like they surely could have done scenes for different Episodes with Hastings while they had Hugh Frazer and the same with Philip Jackson, Pauline Moran and Zoe Wanemaker surely, well perhaps not Zoe Wanemaker's bits but if they had done Styles and Curtain's bits with Hugh Fraser back to back they could have used the same Building in Wiltshire, perhaps I am being fanciful or hoping for too much, I do know they did the Whitehaven Mansions bits over a weekend.

I loved the fact they got Japp, Miss Lemon and Hastings in The Big Four, I just wish there had been a Funeral Scene in Curtain with them and Ariadne, Spence and George, Yes I know they weren't all in Curtain it would just have been a nice end and a lovely Thank you to the Viewers and I wish Battle and Race had been in Cards On the Table then Battle could have attended Poirot's Funeral.