Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Poirot: Series 10 Blu-ray Movie Review

"They lied very well. They are all performers."

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 13, 2013

Almost another two years passed after Series 9 concluded with The Hollow before Poirot once again met his public on New Year's Day 2006 with The Mystery of the Blue Train, a particularly elaborate and star-studded production shot in both England and the south of France. The lines of aging were beginning to show in actor David Suchet's face, although his performance had lost none of its vigor, and an obvious decision was made to let those same lines show through Poirot's paint and powder. Even though the famous detective had found retirement impossible (in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd), his constant engagement with the blackest of human motives continued to take its toll, and his uncompromising morality has exacted a cost. "The journey of life can be hard for those of us who travel alone", he says to a suspect during an interview, in a rare moment of self-revelation. Of course, being Poirot, he is also saying it to see how the suspect reacts.

The creative team that assumed control with Series 9 continued their stylistic experiments and took even greater creative liberties with the text of Christie's novels. The results are some of the liveliest and most contemporary entries of the series, although Christie purists will have to check their expectations at the door. For all the impressive period detail, this is Poirot for the television audience of the 21st Century. Agatha Christie was a populist entertainer. She may have preferred to set her novels in drawing rooms and stately mansions, but she wrote for a general audience. The creative team behind Poirot proceeded in that spirit.

The Mystery of the Blue Train (disc 1) (first broadcast: Jan. 1, 2006, U.K.)

The Mystery of the Blue Train was a novel over which Agatha Christie is known to have struggled, and it remained one of her least favorite. It seems only appropriate, then, that TV adapter Guy Andrew took major liberties with the plot for this special New Year's Day presentation, adding characters and subplots and expanding the scenery into the kind of extravaganza that required location shooting in France and major effects in post-production. The canvas became so big that even identifying the murder victim here would be unfair to first-time viewers, because there are several good candidates.

Blue Train could be described as the story of two young women who board Le Train Bleu from Calais to the French Riviera, and then, for contrived reasons, switch compartments. The first young woman is Katherine Grey (Georgina Rylance), an impoverished American who has just come into an unexpected inheritance. Poirot rescues Katherine at a restaurant prior to departure when she is befuddled by the waiter's ceremonial opening of a wine bottle and pouring of a sample to taste. They become friends, and she asks the genial Belgian to tutor her in the customs of gracious living, a commission that Poirot is only too pleased to accept. Katherine's distant and penniless relatives are already descending upon her in the person of the pretentious Lady Tamplin (Lindsay Duncan), her useless (and much younger) fourth husband Corky (Tom Harper) and her equally useless daughter Lenox (Alice Eve, most recently seen as Dr. Marcus in Star Trek: Into Darkness).

The second young woman has always had money. Her name is Ruth (Jaime Murray, the crazed love interest in Season 2 of Dexter), and she is the daughter of American oil baron Rufus Van Aldin (Elliott Gould). Ruth has a feckless husband named Derek Ketterling (James D'Arcy) from whom she's running away and who refuses to give her a divorce, despite inducements offered by her father and his right-hand man, Major Knighton (Nicholas Farrell). Ruth also has a lover named La Roche (Oliver Milburn), who is a passenger on the Blue Train. And she is traveling with a fabulous ruby named "the Heart of Fire" that her indulgent father acquired specially for her; she and her maid, Ada Mason (Bronagh Gallagher), keep it under lock and key.

It turns out that Katherine Grey and Ruth Van Aldin a/k/a Mrs. Ketterling have a connection. Years earlier, Ruth's wealthy father acquired the business of Katherine's father and ruined him in the process. When Katherine learns that Ruth is a Van Aldin, her entire expression darkens. The Van Aldins ruined her life, she tells Poirot.

Also on the Blue Train is a mysterious Anglo-African woman of elegant attire and regal bearing, who says very little but has the air of someone well-informed (Josette Simon). Who she is, and why she is aboard, will remain unknown until late in the episode.

Unlike the more famous Murder on the Orient Express, where Poirot's investigation remains on the train, this one happens after the Blue Train arrives at its destination, where Poirot has the assistance of a a local French policeman, Inspector Caux (Roger Lloyd-Pack). Poirot does mention, though, that he would very much like to ride the Orient Express someday.


Cards on the Table (disc 1) (first broadcast: Mar. 19, 2006, U.K.)

Poirot is accustomed to murderers who plan their crimes with care, but a victim who plans his own murder? That's something new. Poirot is invited to an unusual evening's entertainment by one of the world's wealthiest men, the mysterious and sinister Mr. Shaitana (played with insinuating theatricality by Alexander Siddig, best known as Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek: DS9).

The guest list consists of four sleuths and four suspected killers. During dinner, Shaitana engages in a theoretical discussion of murder, dropping broad hints suggesting to one or more of the suspected killers that he knows their secret. Then he leads the sleuths and the suspects to card tables in separate rooms and leaves them to play bridge, while he relaxes by the fire and waits to see what happens. By the end of the evening, Shaitana is dead, quietly stabbed through the heart. It is up to Poirot and the three sleuths to identify the killer.

Poirot's three companions are a colorful bunch. Supt. Wheeler (David Westhead) is a top cop at Scotland Yard, although he has a skeleton or two in his closet. Colonel Hughes (Robert Pugh) is in the Secret Service, although neither he nor his friend Poirot would ever say so. The fourth sleuth is an eccentric crime novelist named Ariadne Oliver (Zoë Wanamaker), who chatters incessantly and is full of outlandish theories. Mrs. Oliver is thought to be a satirical self-portrait of Christie herself, and she becomes a recurring character in the later Poirot stories.

The four suspects are a jocular physician, Dr. Roberts (Alex Jennings); an explorer, Major Despard (Tristan Gemmill); a widow, Mrs. Lorrimar (Lesley Manville), who is an expert bridge player; and a shy young woman named Anne Meredith, who lives in the country (Ariadne Oliver calls her "a country mouse"). As the four investigators look into each of their backgrounds, suspicious circumstances are revealed. Each had left the bridge table during Shaitana's social event, providing an opportunity to stab him. But Poirot, true to his method, insists that psychology is the key to unraveling the killer's identity.

Foyle's War star Honeysuckle Weeks appears as Rhoda Dawes, Anne Meredith's housemate and best friend since school, who may hold the key to her mysterious past (and maybe more than that). The adaptation by Nick Dear (who also wrote The Hollow and would write four future episodes of Poirot) makes several major changes to the novel, but the essential murder plot remains the same.




After the Funeral (disc 2) (first broadcast: Mar. 26, 2006, U.K.)

Poirot is hustled down to Enderby Hall by his friend, Gilbert Entwhistle (Robert Bathurst), solicitor to the family of the recently deceased Richard Abernethie (John Carson, in flashbacks). Immediately following the funeral (which, contrary to English custom, concluded with cremation rather than burial), Entwhistle gathered the family for a reading of the will. Several startling events occurred.

First, there was the bizarre outburst by a member of the family that Richard had been murdered. Next came the will itself, a new one prepared while Entwhistle was away on holiday. Contrary to all expectation, Richard Abernethie had disinherited his favorite nephew, George (Michael Fassbender), dividing his estate equally among George's mother, Helen (Geraldine James); two nieces, one of them devoted to charitable works, Susannah Henderson (Lucy Punch), the other, Rosamund Shane (Fiona Glascott), devoted to her theatrical career and that of her husband; Richard's sickly surviving brother, Timothy (Benjamin Whitrow); and his eccentric sister, Cora Gallaccio, who had been cut off from the family decades earlier for running off with an Italian painter. But the next morning, Cora's live-in companion, Miss Gilchrist (Monica Dolan), finds Cora hacked to death in her bed. Their cottage contained nothing of value, as Cora merely dabbled in painting and collected art at auctions and shops.

Poirot has much to sort through. Why did Richard Abernethie suddenly change his mind about George, and why did Cora Gallaccio have to be silenced so swiftly after her brother's death? Poirot asks these questions, but he asks others as well. Before he is done, another individual has been poisoned, and many dreadful secrets of the Abernethie family have been revealed, along with the murderer.


Taken at the Flood (disc 2) (first broadcast: Apr. 2, 2006, U.K.)

The title comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune" (Act IV, scene iii). Recall that Julius Caesar was a tragedy. In Guy Andrews' screen adaptation, one of Christie's blackest stories turns even darker.

At a gentleman's club in London, Poirot hears the story of the Cloade family from Major Porter (Nicholas Le Prevost). Two years ago, the Major was badly injured and has since been confined to a wheelchair when Gordon Cloade's London house exploded from a gas leak just as the family was arriving for a dinner party. Thirteen people inside the house were killed, including Gordon, who was the head of the family, but his new young wife, Rosaleen (Eva Birthistle), survived, along with her brother, David Hunter (Elliot Cowan). Rosaleen inherited all of Gordon's wealth, which proved a major inconvenience for the rest of the family, who were dependent on Gordon's support. Thoroughly under David's control, Rosaleen has refused to extend any financial aid, and all the Cloades are now broke.

(Like all of the Poirot episodes, Taken at the Flood has been set at an indefinite time in the 1930s, whereas Christie's novel was set shortly after World War II, when the Cloades' straitened circumstances could be explained by the state of the British economy. For the TV adaptation, various bad investment decisions and personal habits are used instead.)

Lynn Marchmont (Amanda Douge), daughter of the late Gordon Cloade's sister, Adela Marchmont (Jenny Agutter), has recently returned from years of missionary work in Africa. She was long ago betrothed to her cousin, Rowley (Patrick Baladi), but now finds herself strangely attracted to David Hunter, despite the fact that her entire family loathes him. Poirot, who was a friend of Lynn's father and has corresponded with her throughout her time in Africa, is concerned for her future, and he has a chance to observe the family more closely when they retain his services to investigate the widow Rosaleen. She was previously married before catching the eye of Gordon Cloade, and some members of the Cloade family are not convinced that her first husband, a Robert Underhay, is actually dead as she and her brother claim.

As if on cue, a blackmailer calling himself Enoch Arden (Tim Woodward) appears at the country inn where Poirot is also staying and threatens David Hunter with revealing the whereabouts of Robert Underhay unless David pays 20,000 pounds. With the inevitable logic of a Poirot story, Mr. Arden is soon found bludgeoned to death in his room, and Major Porter, who is brought up from London, identifies him as, in fact, Robert Underhay. Meanwhile, Rosaleen Cloade steadfastly maintains that this was not her first husband. As far as the local police superintendent (Richard Hope) is concerned, David Hunter is the most likely suspect, but he has a solid alibi—he was with Lynn Marchmont at the time.

Poirot has more to disentangle than even this sketch indicates. In the end, he promises that "Poirot shall produce a murderer of whose viciousness he stands in awe!" As always, he keeps his promise.

Taken at the Flood is notable for the pivotal role played by Poirot's Catholic faith in the investigation, an element not present in Christie's original novel (although Catholic nuns are a recurring motif in After the Funeral). The introduction of this theme anticipates the major religious and spiritual debates of Series 12's adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express , which generated considerable controversy for its deviation from Christie's text.

Poirot: Series 10 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

In what is a first in my experience of reviewing Poirot on Blu-ray, there is a noticeable variation among the quality of the episodes in Series 10. The difference may result from various shooting styles, given that each episode had a different director and cinematographer. None of the episodes look bad by any means, and certainly none of them exhibit the problems that plagued the whole of Series 7 & 8, but the variable quality was obvious in viewing these two 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays.

Cards on the Table is the weakest of the four, with the softest and least detailed image and noticeable grain. "Least detailed" in this context still means that the image has enough detail to allow appreciation of Mr. Shaitana's ornate residence, where the first half of the episode is set, and of the various suspects' homes and places of work, where subsequent interviews occur. The blacks of the gentlemen's evening wear are solid, and the colors are vibrant and saturated.

The remaining three episodes in Series 10 are all significantly sharper and more detailed, with After the Funeral taking top honors, followed closely by Taken at the Flood and The Mystery of the Blue Train. All three have finely resolved images with little or no noise, lively and varied palettes, good blacks and well-adjusted contrast. On the whole, Series 10 maintains the standards sets by Acorn's early releases of Poirot, but ever since the show entered the era where the A&E Network acted as co-producer, the video quality of Acorn's releases cannot be assumed.

Poirot: Series 10 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 remains Acorn Media's new audio standard for Poirot, and the stereo sound mixes for these four episodes are consistent with prior episodes under the new regime. Certain key sound effects (notably, the train engine, whistles and wheels in The Mystery of the Blue Train) are more prominent than the usual sound editing, but dialogue still has priority. With Series 10, scoring duties were taken over by Stephen McKeon (Primeval), who provided a more lush orchestral presence that at times recalls the elegiac tone of the late John Barry.

Poirot: Series 10 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 45:36): Narrated by Tony Wilson, this unusually detailed "making of" documentary features on-set footage from all four episodes in Series 10. It includes interviews with actor David Suchet, as well as numerous guest stars and various personnel behind the camera, including producer Trevor Hopkins. Caution: Spoilers galore.



• Photo Gallery (1080p; 2:31).



• Trailers: At startup, disc 1 plays the usual trailer for Acorn Media, plus a trailer for Dirk Gently.

Poirot: Series 10 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In the Behind the Scenes documentary for Series 10, David Suchet says that he enjoyed filming it more than any to date. Ironically, it contains some of the darkest tales and most evil villains to have appeared in Poirot so far. The great detective's revelations of the murderer have begun to take on an angrier tone. Since he could not manage to stay retired, Poirot's only option when confronted with the boundless human capacity for evil is condemn it. "If God should withhold His mercy from anyone on Earth, it surely will be you", he thunders at one killer he has exposed. For a brief moment, he sounds more like an Old Testament prophet than a detective. Highly recommended.