Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.5

Poirot: Series 5 Blu-ray Movie Review

Puzzles Past and Present, Riddles Far and Wide

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 20, 2012

The fifth series of Agatha Christie's Poirot was first broadcast in 1993, and it marked the last time, until the upcoming Series 13, that the great detective would solve a case within the confines of a single hour. For the next twenty years, often with long breaks between series, Poirot would consist solely of feature films adapted from Christie's novels.

The eight episodes in Series 5 can be fairly said to represent the summation of everything the original creative team had learned to date about constructing a one-hour TV drama from a Christie short story. They sent Poirot to exotic locations (real and simulated), constructed lavish sets, peopled them with multiple extras and staged extravagant sequences, including a debate at Cambridge University, a South American military coup and a high-speed car chase on English country roads. With a central character as strong as the Belgian master sleuth and a portrayal as authoritative as David Suchet's, the writers and producers seem to have been emboldened to take whatever creative chances struck their fancy. They could always count on Poirot to provide a rock-solid foundation, with his nimble wits, impeccable manners and unshakeable self-confidence. No matter how wild or complicated the story became, Poirot could sort through the facts, make reassuring sense of everything and provide a satisfactory resolution just as the hour ran out.

"The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb" concerns an Anglo-American archaeological expedition to unearth the burial chamber of a King Tut-like pharoah. Immediately upon breaking the seal and entering the tomb, a senior member of the team, Sir Guy Willard (Grant Thatcher), dies of an apparent heart attack. Rumors of a "curse" sweep the press, and the scientist's wife, Lady Willard (Anna Cropper), fears for the safety of her son, John (Peter Reeves), a junior archaeologist who wants to take his father's place. Lady Willard asks Poirot to investigate, but he sees no crime to solve. Then other members of the team begin to die under questionable circumstances. Poirot, who does not believe in either curses or coincidence, summons the reliable Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser) and boards a plane for Cairo. Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) remains behind to do essential research, although she is preoccupied with the recent passing of her beloved cat.

In "The Underdog", Sir Reuben Astwell (Denis Lill) is a successful industrialist who bullies everyone around him: family, servants, employees. When he turns up clubbed to death in his study, there is no shortage of suspects, but the focus quickly narrows to Astwell's nephew, Charles (Jonathan Phillips), who'd been heard drunkenly berating his uncle the night before. Poirot, who is staying at the Astwell estate, sees too many inconsistencies and can't help but wonder about the valuable new formula for artificial rubber that Astwell's company was about to introduce. The reliable Miss Lemon arrives from London to assist her boss in eliciting evidence with her newly acquired skills in hypnosis.

"Yellow Iris" gives Poirot a second chance to solve a case he was unable to complete two years earlier in Argentina, because a military coup resulted in his arrest and deportation. A lady named Iris Russell (Robin McCaffrey) apparently committed suicide by poison during a party in her honor at a restaurant called Les Jardins des Cygnes; her death occured before her horrified husband, Barton Russell (David Troughton), and sister, Pauline (Geraldine Somerville). Now, the owner of Les Jardins des Cygnes is reopening the restaurant in London, and Barton Russell is reassembling the members of the dinner party there in an effort to prove that his wife's death wasn't a suicide. Poirot will attend.

"The Case of the Missing Will" involves an old friend of Poirot, Andrew Marsh (Mark Kingston), a distinguished Cambridge alumnus, who is wealthy, determinedly anti-feminist and, as he confides to Poirot, ailing. Marsh further surprises Poirot by announcing his intention to make a new will leaving everything to Violet Wilson (Beth Goddard), the young woman whose care and education have been his responsibility since she was a young girl. But before Marsh can do anything, he dies of massive heart failure under suspicious circumstances—and then his existing will is found to have disappeared from his solicitor's office. Only Poirot can decipher the web of deceit and evasion in which his late friend was entangled.

In "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman", Captain Hastings buys an Italian sports car, and Miss Lemon acquires a beau named Graves (Leonard Preston). These two activities intersect when Graves turns out to be employed by one Count Foscatini (Sidney Kean), who seems to have business of some sort with the owner of the auto dealership, Bruno Vizzini (David Neal). According to Graves, the Italian government is involved, but, this being 1936, which is the era of Mussolini, the Italian officials in London are tight-lipped. The Count meets a bad end, and it falls to Poirot to determine the who, why and how.

"The Chocolate Box" finds Poirot returning to Belgium in the company of Chief Inspector Japp (Phillip Jackson), who is receiving an award for service to the Belgian government. On native soil, Poirot confronts the specter of a 20-year-old case from his years as a junior officer on the local force. A rising young politician, Paul Deroulard (James Coombes), died suddenly of what the courts ruled a heart attack, despite Poirot's insistence that he had been poisoned with chocolates supplied by one Xavier St. Alard (Geoffrey Whitehead), who is now mayor of the city (and still bears a grudge against Poirot). Japp is fascinated to learn of a case where his old friend did not prevail; so Poirot tells him the story. The episode is especially intriguing, because it shows Poirot as a much younger man: trimmer, with more hair and attired in the elaborate uniform of a Belgian policeman. It also reveals the origin of the unique stickpin that routinely graces Poirot's lapel, in the shape of a miniature flower vase and always holding a fresh blossom.

The title of "Dead Man's Mirror" refers to an antique for which Poirot is outbid at auction by Gervase Chevenix (Iain Cuthbertson), a wealthy art collector who offers the mirror to Poirot as a fee for unraveling a fraud that Chevenix believes has been perpetrated by an architect, John Lake (Richard Lintern). Poirot and Hastings visit the Chevenix estate, an eerie estate full of Egyptian relics and presided over by Vanda Chevenix (Zena Walker), a mystic who believes in the "spirit plane". As the title foretells, Gervase Chevenix is shortly dead, an apparent suicide, but with many inconsistencies that Poirot quickly spots. The clues are almost too numerous, and the suspects all have motives, including Hugo Trent (Jeremy Northam), Chevenix' nephew, in whose business Chevenix refused to invest but who might now inherit money under the dead man's will.

The final episode, "Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan", finds Poirot dispatched to a resort in Brighton on doctor's orders. He's been working too hard and needs complete rest. As luck would have it, Brighton is also hosting a theatrical troupe performing a new play, Pearls Before Swine, for which the PR gimmick is that the lead actress, Margaret Opalsen (Sorcha Cusack), wears a fabulously valuable pearl necklace during each performance. At all other times, it's kept under lock and key in the hotel suite Mrs. Opalsen shares with her husband, Ed (Trevor Cooper), the company manager and owner. The suite just happens to be opposite Poirot's. When the necklace disappears from its locked box, seemingly under the eyes of an attendant assigned to watch it, Poirot's vacation abruptly ends—and he's only too glad of the opportunity.

Poirot: Series 5 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Acorn Media continues to defy expectation with their Blu-ray releases of Poirot, on which the video quality improves with each successive series. The image on these two 1080p, AVC-encoded discs (derived, as with the previous series, from 16mm sources) is the best yet, featuring exceptional clarity and detail, so that even long shots showing large crowds successfully differentiate individual faces, features, outfits and objects. Colors are saturated and frequently vibrant, e.g., in the two different versions of the Jardins des Cygnes, at an Italian wedding and at various scenes in Brighton. Blacks are truly rendered, which is essential for a period drama in which formal attire was standard at dinnertime, and contrast remains at the appropriate level to distinguish elements in the frame without blooming or blowing out detail. Film grain is readily evident, but almost never obvious, and there are no indications of grain reduction, detail filtering or artificial sharpening. The image remains natural and film-like, and of course there are no compression artifacts.

Poirot: Series 5 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

After issuing two series of Poirot with PCM audio, Acorn has elected to return to Dolby Digital 2.0 at 256 kbps on Series 5. (The back of the disc case and slipcover erroneously state that the audio is PCM.) It's unclear why Acorn made this change; obviously space can't be a consideration, since each of the two discs contains one episode fewer than previous Poirot sets consisting of one- hour episodes. As with the previous series, the sound is mono with identical left and right tracks that collapse to the center when played through a matrix decoder.

The dialogue is certainly clear enough with DD 2.0, and Christopher Gunning's musical score still sounds excellent. However, during the opening credits, Gunning's famous theme doesn't have quite the same degree of presence, and the individual instruments aren't as differentiated, as with the PCM presentation. Whether this change is attributable to the delivery format alone, or indicates some sort of remix, is impossible to say. It certainly came as a surprise, because I initially didn't notice a difference when Acorn switched from PCM to DD 2.0, but the change back was, for whatever reason, audible.

Poirot: Series 5 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than introductory trailers on disc 1 for Acorn Media and Midsomer Murders: The Early Cases, no extras are included.

Poirot: Series 5 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Acorn Media has already announced Series 6 of Poirot for August 28, 2012, at which point they will have completed all episodes shown in the 20th Century. The show resumed broadcast just after the millennium with feature-length episodes that aired at irregular intervals from 2000 through 2011. Expect to see those next year, but in the meantime enjoy these finely wrought adventures of Agatha Christie's most famous creation. Highly recommended.