Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

Poirot: Series 13 Blu-ray Movie Review

"I played the game"

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 4, 2014

When the final episode of Poirot was first shown in the U.K. in November 2013, it capped the conclusion of nearly a quarter century for actor David Suchet's television portrayal of Agatha Christie's most famous detective. As Suchet reveals in the interview included with this Blu-ray set of the final series of Poirot, he had no ongoing contract and never knew from year to year whether the show would continue to the point it has now reached, where, with a few minor exceptions, all of Christie's Poirot stories have been filmed. But how could it have been otherwise? Other actors had portrayed the eccentric Belgian sleuth both effectively and memorably, but no one had given him a life beyond the screen as Suchet has. With each new series, the distribution of Poirot had expanded. The show is now available in every territory with a broadcaster. The appeal of Poirot transcends differences of language, culture, race and ethnicity.

The feature-length episodes that comprise Poirot's swan song are notable for several things, including their stylish photography, their elegant locations and the return (all too briefly in some instances) of familiar faces from the show's early days. Of particular importance is Poirot's old friend of limited insight but stout-hearted character, Captain Arthur Hastings (Hugh Fraser), who plays a crucial role in the final episode entitled Curtain: Poirot's Last Case.

Although all five of the Series 13 episodes may eventually appear on PBS, at the moment the only way to see the whole collection is either on disc or by subscribing to the Acorn TV web service. As controlling owner of the Christie Estate, Acorn served as co-producer of these episodes and is their principal distributor in North America.

Elephants Can Remember (disc 1) (first broadcast: June 9, 2013, U.K.)

Elephants Can Remember occupies an odd place in Agatha Christie's canon. It was the last Poirot novel she wrote, although it was not the last to be published. Christie had planned Poirot's exit long before, writing Curtain: Poirot's Last Case during World War II and locking it in a bank vault in case she did not survive. Elephants, which was published in 1972, seems far from such concerns, and detached form the world of Curtain, in large part because it rests on Poirot's relationship with the crime writer, Ariadne Oliver (Zoë Wanamaker), who did not become a major figure in the Poirot stories until after the war.

As with nearly all of the plots in Poirot, the story has been re-set in the thirties by screenwriter Nick Dear (who also adapted Dead Man's Folly for this series). In an opening flashback, we see a young married couple, General and Lady Ravenscroft (Adrian Lukis and Annabel Mullion), die of gunshot wounds on a cliff outside their house in Overcliffe. No one can decide whether it is a double suicide or a murder/suicide. Their young daughter, Celia, is sent abroad to school.

Thirteen years later, Celia Ravenscroft (Vanessa Kirby) has returned to England and is engaged to Desmond Burton-Cox (Ferdinand Kingsley), whose mother (Greta Scacchi) doesn't seem too pleased by the match. Ariadne Oliver is Celia's godmother, although, by her own admission, she hasn't done much for the girl except write her a check on her eighteenth birthday. But now Mrs. Oliver has been asked to do something special for Celia, which is to find out exactly what happened to her parents. Who killed whom, and most importantly, why?

Mrs. Oliver calls on her famous detective friend for help, but Poirot is immersed in a case involving the murder of a retired psychiatrist whose son, another doctor named Willoughby (Iain Glen), cannot understand why anyone would want to hurt a harmless elderly physician. So Poirot advises Mrs. Oliver to investigate for herself. Go to Overcliffe, he says. Ask people who knew the Ravenscrofts what they remember. Ariadne calls this a search for "elephants" because of the animals' reputation for long memories.

Anyone familiar with Agatha Christie's plots will already suspect that Poirot's case and Mrs. Oliver's inquiries will eventually reveal a connection. It turns out that the murdered psychiatrist once treated a patient involved with the Ravenscroft family. When Poirot hears what Mrs. Oliver has learned from her "elephants", he quickly discovers that nothing is what it seems where the Ravenscrofts are concerned.


The Big Four (disc 1) (first broadcast: Oct. 23, 2013, U.K.)

The Big Four was published in 1927, forty-five years before Elephants Can Remember, but no one had tried to adapt it for Poirot until now, because it was considered "an unfilmable mess", in the words of writer Mark Gatiss, one of the creators of the BBC's Sherlock. But Gatiss and his partner, Ian Hallard, gamely hacked away at the text, trimming the list of characters, rearranging the plot and streamlining events. The story's confusion worked to their advantage. You know what you're seeing can't be right, but you still aren't sure what's going on.

The Big Four marks the Series 13 reunion of the original gang from the early years of Poirot: Chief Inspector—now Assistant Commissioner—Japp (Philip Jackson), Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) and reliable Captain Hastings, whose familiar exclamation of "Good Lord!" is a welcome reminder of old times. Joining these stalwarts is Poirot's indispensable valet, George (David Yelland), who has taken charge of the detective's daily affairs since Miss Lemon moved on. They are reunited for the sad occasion of Hercule Poirot's funeral and—wait a minute! This isn't the episode entitled Poirot's Last Case. What's going on?

Gatiss and Hallard have shifted The Big Four forward in time to the eve of World War II, when rumblings of hostilities abound throughout Europe. Opposing the drumbeat of violence, a Peace Party has sprung up with the backing of an American millionaire, Abe Ryland (James Carroll Jordan), a French scientist, Madame Olivier (Patricia Hodge) and a Chinese pacificist, Li Yang Chen, who cannot leave Hong Kong. But the Peace Party has powerful enemies. At an exhibition chess match intended to draw publicity and raise funds, the famous Russian grandmaster lured out of retirement to play an exhibition game is murdered, drawing protests from the Soviet government and endangering its support for the Allied cause. An ambitious Fleet Street journalist, L.B. Tysoe (Tom Brooke), tells Poirot that the murder was committed by an international criminal conspiracy called "The Big Four", which is rumored to want the Peace Party to fail because The Big Four is heavily involved in the arms trade. Tysoe has a confidential source, but he shortly becomes a victim of the Big Four. Meanwhile, organizers of the Peace Party begin to disappear. Have they been kidnapped, murdered or gone into hiding?

News that the world's most famous detective, Hercule Poirot, is investigating the Big Four leads to the explosive turn of events that brings Japp, Hastings, George and Miss Lemon to a graveside where they watch a coffin with Poirot's name being lowered into the ground. But there is more to come—so much more—before the final Curtain.




Dead Man's Folly (disc 2) (first broadcast: Oct. 30, 2013, U.K.)

Poirot receives an urgent summons from Ariadne Oliver to join her at the Devonshire estate known as Nasse House, where the new owner, the nouveau riche George Stubbs (Sean Pertwee), is planning a summer fête for his neighbors. Mrs. Oliver has been asked to devise a "murder game", complete with clues and a victim, and she suddenly suspects, though she can't say exactly why, that the game is a ruse for the real thing.

Nasse House has a peculiar history. Built several generations ago by the Folliat family, it had to be sold by the only surviving member, Mrs. Amy Folliat (Sinéad Cusack), after she lost both her husband and her two sons and was desperate financially. George Stubbs allows Mrs. Folliat to continue living in a guest house on the property, because she adopted and raised an orphan named Hattie (Stephanie Leonidas), who is now married to George. Beautiful but delicate, Hattie has a wayward disposition and a child's mind, although her husband's assistant, Mrs. Brewis (Rebecca Front), thinks it's an act to gain sympathy and keep Hattie's husband at her beck and call.

Despite George Stubbs's wealth, his taste is considered vulgar. The architect, Michael Weyman (James Anderson), who has been hired to make improvements on the Nasse House estate, is appalled at his patron's instructions, such as the direction to erect a small decorative building where there should obviously be a garden. Such a useless structure is commonly called a "folly", which gives the story's title its double meaning.

On the day of the fête, Mrs. Oliver's suspicions prove to be well-founded, as the festive atmosphere is shattered by the discovery of a genuine corpse. But the murder may be only a diversion. In the confusion, Hattie Stubbs disappears and cannot be found anywhere on the property or in the nearby town. Her husband is beside himself with worry and anger at the local police for their inability to find her or any indication of where she went. (Noted character actor Nicholas Woodeson appears in what amounts to a cameo as a police sergeant.) Suspicion immediately falls on Hattie's second cousin from abroad, Etienne De Souza (Elliot Barnes-Worrell), who just arrived to visit her after a separation of many years and whose letter announcing his arrival frightened the fragile creature, because, as she told her husband, De Souza is a "killer".

As is so often the case, Poirot's best source turns out to be a local person whom no one else thinks to interview, an elderly fisherman, John Merdell (Sam Kelly), who remembers the Folliats from many years back. But the sleuth has to return to his London quarters at Whitehaven Mansions and reflect on everything he has heard and observed, before the solution presents itself.


The Labours of Hercules (disc 2) (first broadcast: Nov. 6, 2013, U.K.)

The Labours of Hercules was originally a collection of twelve short stories by Agatha Christie, in each of which Poirot solved a case corresponding to one of the legendary Greek hero's mythological tasks. For purposes of the Poirot TV series, elements from several of the stories were inventively combined into a single case of robbery and murder by writer Guy Andrews, who had written several previous installments of Poirot, notably The Mystery of the Blue Train. (Andrews also penned the fifth installment of Helen Mirren's landmark series Prime Suspect.) To preserve a connection to the title, part of the stolen property is a valuable set of paintings depicting "The Labours of Hercules".

The story begins with a sting operation at a public reception, which has been arranged by Poirot to entrap a notorious thief of jewels and art known as Marrascaud, whom Poirot describes as a fiend who kills for pleasure. Despite the best efforts of Poirot and Scotland Yard, both the valuable necklace and the painting used as bait vanish from the affair, and Marrascaud leaves the ravaged body of an innocent victim behind, as if to taunt Poirot.

Wracked with guilt, Poirot withdraws from public life and spends months brooding on his mistakes. He is roused from his depression during a ride about London, when he realizes that the chauffeur, Ted Williams (Tom Austen), is even more despondent than he is. Williams fell deeply in love with the ladies' maid of a famous Russian ballerina, who left town with her mistress and from whom the heartbroken driver has not heard since then. Poirot, whose doctor has been urging him to take on a new case, abruptly resolves to find the chauffeur's lost love and bring her back to London.

Poirot learns that the ballerina, Katrina Samoushenka (Fiona O'Shaughnessy), is in seclusion at the Hotel Olympos in the Swiss Alps. Suffering from mysterious ailments of a psychological nature, she is seen only by her physician, Dr. Lutz (Simon Callow). Upon arriving at the hotel by funicular railway up the mountainside, Poirot discovers several remarkable coincidences. The first is that he has inadvertently crossed paths with the Swiss police, whose Inspector Lementeuil (Nicholas McGaughey) informs him that the Hotel Olympos is believed to be the home base where the notorious Marrascaud hides his loot. They are staking out the hotel, hoping to catch him.

A second coincidence is the surprise presence of a face from Poirot's past: Countess Vera Rossakoff, the sultry jewel thief whom we last saw in The Double Clue in Series 3, where she was played by Kika Markham. Now played by Orla Brady, after what is said to be the passage of twenty years, the Countess has lost none of her charm or her affection for Poirot, but she has acquired a daughter, Alice Cunningham (Eleanor Tomlinson), who is studying to be a criminologist. Miss Cunningham—the name is her father's of whom the Countess says, simply, "Forget him! I have"—is delighted to meet the famous detective whose name has so often been the subject of stories told by her mother. Also, the Countess swears to Poirot that she is no longer a jewel thief. Well, mostly.

Yet a third coincidence is the presence of a political figure named Harold Waring (Rupert Evans), who was present at the reception the night Poirot failed to catch Marrascaud and has since left England under a cloud of scandal. Waring is involved with a young wife, Elsie Clayton (Morven Christie), whose abusive husband stays in his room drinking but whose violence can be heard by all the guests and leaves evidence on Elsie's face. Elsie's mother, Mrs. Rice (Sandy McDade), keeps close tabs on her.

Intrigues and mysteries abound among this odd assortment, and also among the hotel staff, which has seen several changes since the previous season. Questions of who is what become all the more pressing when snows block the funicular's tunnel and strand everyone at the hotel for an indefinite period. But the isolation also gives Poirot an ideal opportunity to study everyone closely, and a clear picture begins to emerge.




Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (disc 2) (first broadcast: Nov. 13, 2013, U.K.)

In a fitting arrangement for a novel that Agatha Christie wrote many years before its publication, Curtain was the first episode of Series 13 to be filmed but the last to be broadcast. The adaptation by Kevin Elyot, who previously adapted Death on the Nile, is faithful to Christie's presentation of Poirot's finale, with minor condensations for dramatic purposes. The direction by Hettie Macdonald, who previously helmed the stylish The Mystery of the Blue Train is notably different from prior episodes. The tone is autumnal but not sad. A devout Catholic to the end, Poirot does not believe that death is the end. His greatest fear is leaving important work unfinished.

The year is 1949, and Captain Hastings, having recently lost his wife to illness, is summoned to the house at Styles where he and Poirot began their partnership thirty years earlier (The Mysterious Affair at Styles). He is shocked to find a withered and ailing Poirot, confined to a wheelchair by arthritis and a failing heart and attended by a new valet, Curtis (Adam Hastings), because George has been called away on family business. The great detective is clearly dying, a fact confirmed by a doctor's examination midway through the episode, but he is desperate to conclude a case that now occupies all his waking thoughts. He needs Hastings to go where Poirot no longer can, to be his eyes and ears and report back everything. Poirot's frustration with his failing body is palpable. There are moments in Curtain when it boils over into angry tirades at his old friend. In happier times, the courtly Belgian gentleman would never have allowed such words to pass his lips.

Since the war, Styles Court has been operated as a hotel by the domineering Daisy Luttrell (Anne Reid) and her meek husband, Colonel Toby Luttrell (John Standing). Poirot tells Hastings that a murderer is currently there but will not say who it is, because Hastings' face is an open book. A prologue to the episode shows a court case in which a young woman is hanged for murder, with the suggestion that she was wrongly convicted. As Hastings observes the people around him, he finds a collection of personalities of the sort that, once upon a time, Poirot would have assembled in some drawing room where he would unveil the killer with a dramatic flourish.

In addition to the Luttrells themselves, Styles Court is host to the melancholy Elizabeth Cole (Helen Baxendale), who turns out to be the sister of the woman hanged in the prologue, allegedly for poisoning their father; Elizabeth insists her sister was innocent. Sir William Boyd-Carrington (Philip Glenister, Life on Mars) is staying with the Luttrells while his own home is being renovated, and he has invited the Franklins, a doctor (Shaun Dingwall) and his wife, Barbara (Anna Madeley), to join him. Barbara travels with a nurse named Craven (Claire Keelan) to care for her supposedly fragile health. Dr. Franklin is accompanied by the assistant in his research into extracts of the Calobar bean, who just happens to be Hastings' estranged daughter, Judith (Alice Orr-Ewing), an independent-minded woman with whom Barbara Franklin suspects her husband may be having an affair.

The group is rounded out by Major Allerton (Matthew McNulty), a handsome womanizer from London, who, to Hastings' consternation, seems to have set his sights on his daughter Judith, and Stephen Norton (Aidan McArdle), a stuttering bird watcher, who knows Allerton and clearly envies his prowess with the opposite sex.

As Poirot remains confined to his bed and wheelchair, laboring with ever greater effort to communicate with Hastings as even breathing become more difficult, several murders do indeed occur on the premises, just as the great detective predicted when Hastings arrived. But Poirot does not provide the solution in a drawing room or before a gathering of suspects, and justice is not delivered by the hangman. The resolution of Curtain is unlike any other in all of Poirot, and as befits the final collaboration of a singular partnership, it occurs in a private moment between the two dearest of friends.

Poirot: Series 13 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Poirot continued to be shot on film even after many British television shows had switched to digital capture, but the episodes in Series 13 were acquired digitally (unless I have misjudged the make of the cameras pictured in the photo gallery included in this Blu-ray set). The image on Acorn Media's three 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays for Series 13 are consistent with those of Series 12 and indeed superior, which no doubt reflects advances in technology at every step of the chain, from initial capture to mastering and replication. Some degree of diffusion, whether applied in camera or in post-production, has frequently been an element of Poirot's style, and Series 13 is no exception, especially in the valedictory episode, Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. Even with diffusion, however, there is no mistaking the deep blacks, rich colors and copious detail that allow the viewer to appreciate the ideally chosen locations and careful period recreations by the Poirot design team.

Christie's most famous creation inhabited a bygone world of well-appointed drawing rooms, formal attire and gracious living, and one of Poirot's many eccentricities was to carry that world with him, and recreate it as much as possible, wherever he went. (Note how he always spreads a spotless linen handkerchief on an outdoor bench before sitting down.) As Poirot grew more successful, greater resources were devoted to the period recreations and impressive sets. The settings in these last five episodes are some of the most elaborate yet, and the Blu-ray image shows them to best advantage.

Poirot: Series 13 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

To the last, Poirot continued to have a basic stereo soundtrack that emphasized the literate dialogue and essential sound effects. The track is encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 and sounds flawless. Christian Henson, who so effectively scored Series 12, returned for the final episodes, with a score that is by turns lively, foreboding and emotional. It also invokes Christopher Gunning's original Poirot theme at all the right moments.

Poirot: Series 13 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with David Suchet (1080p; 1.78:1; 18:45): Interviewed at Agatha Christie's former home at Greenway during the filming of Dead Man's Folly, Suchet answers a wide array of questions about twenty-four years of playing Hercule Poirot. This interview appears to be an excerpt from the 50-minute BBC special, Being Poirot, which aired in the U.K. on the same night as Curtain.



• Photo Gallery (1080p; various; 1:54): A slide show composed of both production stills and behind-the-scenes photos.



• Additional Trailers: At startup, disc 1 players trailers for Acorn Media, Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie and David Suchet: In the Footsteps of St. Paul, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Poirot: Series 13 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Concurrently with the release of Series 13, Acorn Media is also releasing Poirot: The Final Cases Collection, which includes Series 7 through 13 and completes the set for those who already own Poirot: The Early Cases Collection. Acorn is also releasing Poirot: The Complete Cases Collection for those who are starting from scratch. However one chooses to acquire Poirot, it represents a unique achievement in the history of film and television: a nearly 25-year effort to realize the entire career of a single author's beloved creation in dramatic form with the same actor playing the part continuously. No one will ever attempt this again with Hercule Poirot. No one may ever attempt anything like this again, full stop. As for Series 13, highest recommendation.