21 April 2022, The Tablet

Playing Christie straight


Television

Playing Christie straight

Will Poulter and Lucy Boynton
Photo: © Mammoth Screen/Agatha Christie Limited

 

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Britbox

The trick with an Agatha Christie adaptation is not to mess around with the original too much. Her novels work because they are all plot and very little character: a bit like medieval quest literature, the reader asks only to follow the trail and untangle knotty problems along the way to the truth. Recent productions have attempted to give Christie’s characters acres of meaningful inner life which just gets in the way and makes the journey a drag. What did poor old Hercule Poirot do that nearly a century after his creation he should be randomly burdened with a secret psychological torment via the machinations of Kenneth Branagh twirling his moustache?

 

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