les petits meurtres d'agatha christie

I am writing reviews for the website Cinema Sentries now, too. Here's an excerpt of my latest review of a French-language Agatha Christie mystery series, "Les Petits Meurtres D'Agatha Christie, Set 1 DVD Review: Who Needs Poirot?." Please don't be put off by the prospect of subtitles. These shows are really terrific.

... Christie's famous sleuths, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, have been replaced by two sets of French investigators. In the first six mysteries, set in the 1930s-era France, Superintendent Larosière (Antoine Duléry) and his trusty sidekick, Inspector Lampion (Marius Colucci) solve a variety of murders. Larosière, who loves fine food and has an eye for the ladies, can be both dismissive and gentle with poor Lampion (sometimes at the same time). Lampion seems to have trouble just trying to keep up with his brilliant yet mercurial boss. They are a witty pair, and these renditions definitely have brought a sense of humor to the fore. Although frequently funny, the pair is also deadly serious about crime and catching criminals — they continually remind the contemporary audience that the guillotine awaits their convicted murderers. There is also a dash of romance in these mysteries; they are French, after all. Larosière may find himself attracted to both a lady in peril as well as a possible suspect. Lampion also finds romance — with different men he meets during the course of their cases. ...

Lampion and Larosière

poirot and marple — fan favorites

Acorn Media has released Agatha Christie's Poirot & Marple: Fan Favorites Collection on DVD. Acorn asked fans to vote for their favorite Christie mysteries, and have now packaged the results in an excellent six-disc collection.


David Suchet is the ultimate Hercule Poirot. He portrays the dapper Belgian detective with flair, humor, and intelligence. The Art Deco period sets and locations just enhance the experience. The six feature-length Poirot mysteries on three discs also feature Poirot's inimitable allies Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser), Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson), and Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran), Poirot's uber-efficient secretary. Some well-known guest stars also appear.

All six Poirot episodes are excellent, but Acorn wisely starts things off with "Murder on the Orient Express," a superb interpretation of Christie's classic whodunit, and one of the best in the entire series. Originally broadcast in 2010, with such recognizable guest stars as Jessica Chastain, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Bonneville, and Barbara Hershey, Poirot must determine who has brutally murdered an extremely unpleasant man named Ratchett (Toby Jones), a fellow passenger on the Orient Express. The claustrophobic environment (the train is stalled on the tracks during a blizzard), and the wide array of suspects, makes for a perfect Christie "closed room" murder. Suchet also gets the opportunity to explore parts of his character, such as Poirot's advancing age and his faith, in more depth than in other episodes of the series.

The rest of the episodes in the collection are from earlier in the series, but all have their great points as well. "Hercule Poirot’s Christmas," from 1995, features one of Christie's more grisly murders. Poirot is a reluctant house guest of the rich and elderly Simeon Lee (Vernon Dobtcheff), who has hired the detective to "observe" his family over the Christmas holiday. The audience may not care about the victim, who is one of Christie's most unlikeable characters, but they will enjoy the subtle humor and clever resolution to the crime, which, in typical Christie fashion, has been hiding in plain sight all along.

1990's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is a post-WWI story involving Poirot and his friend Hastings, renewing their wartime friendship over a country house murder. It is as humorous as it is clever, and the viewer can enjoy watching Poirot tease his friend Hastings' less-than-stellar deductive properties, while marveling at how the little Belgian detective manages to keep up with the story's twists and turns before he catches the killer.

"The ABC Murders," originally broadcast in 1992, is one of Christie's more interesting plots. She sets Poirot on the trail of a serial killer with an alphabet fetish. Poirot must get into the mind of the killer, his focus more on psychology this time out than motive. Can Poirot, Japp, Hastings, and a band of interested parties - the loved ones of the killer's victims - form an effective detective squad and stop the self-named "ABC" before he strikes again?

Christie loved to send Poirot around the world, reflecting her own journeys with archaeologist husband Max Mallowan. In 1993's "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb," an Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings seems to be cursed as members of an excavation party keep dying. Poirot and Hastings travel to Egypt to discover the real culprit behind the series of mysterious deaths at an archaeological site. The locations and settings are as top-notch as ever, and the episode manages to successfully combine the Egyptomania of the period with Poirot's (and Christie's) truly ingenious solution.

The final Poirot mystery is one of Suchet's earliest outings as the character, it is 1989's "Four and Twenty Blackbirds." Viewers are treated to more aspects of Poirot's finicky character (the man must be a Virgo), especially regarding his relationship towards food, and his odd couple friendship with Japp, as the pair try to discover if there is something fishy behind the recent deaths of two estranged brothers. Are their deaths, which occurred within days of one another, coincidence or murder? Poirot's favorite restaurant, also a haunt of one of the brothers, and an unconventional artist's model, provide both exquisite period detail as well as clues to the solution of the mystery.

As for the Marple end of things, actresses Geraldine McEwan (right) and Julia McKenzie (below) offer their interpretations of the deceptively sweet Miss Marple. Christie's small-town busybody sleuth appears in five feature-length episodes from the Marple series in this set. The first three mysteries feature McEwan, and the last two McKenzie. Miss Marple's village of St. Mary Mead and its murderous denizens are portrayed in beautiful period detail, but the elderly sleuth does get out and about to solve a mystery or two. These interpretations of Christie's stories have also noticeably upped the sex angle. Sex and romance was always a feature in Christie's original tales, but the author tended to allude to such relationships more daintily than the way in which they are depicted herein.

The first episode, "The Murder at the Vicarage," originally broadcast in 2004, features the usually cuddly Derek Jacobi as the bombastic Colonel Protheroe, a self-important bigwig in St. Mary Mead. Protheroe almost seems to ask to be murdered, as he huffs and puffs his way through the village, and soon enough someone eagerly complies. Miss Marple must sort through a list of suspects who also happen to be her very good friends and neighbors--played by such talents as Janet McTeer, Jason Flemyng, and Rachael Stirling--before she can come up with a solution to the crime.

2005's "A Murder Is Announced" has Miss Marple trying to sort out why a "murder game," intended for an evening's entertainment, turned chillingly real. McEwan's Marple is more of the annoying little old lady next door than Agatha Christie's kindly, fluffy elderly spinster, who always seemed to be knitting something fuzzy in blue or pink. But her nosiness serves her well as she sorts out the complex relationships of the guests at the house party and discovers who is responsible. As with all the Marple episodes, the casting is first-rate, with such guest stars as Zoë Wanamaker, Matthew Goode, Cherie Lunghi, and Sienna Guillory.

The final McEwan Marple episode in the collection, 2007's "At Bertram’s Hotel," bears little resemblance to the original Christie story, apart from Miss Marple's affection for London's Bertram's Hotel. If Christie fans can tolerate the changes to the story, there is a lot to enjoy, especially the period atmosphere of the hotel and its regular and transient guests, played by such great actors as Francesca Annis, Polly Walker, and Peter Davison.

Julia McKenzie takes over as Marple in "A Pocket Full of Rye," which was originally broadcast in 2008. This adaptation features a much more down-to-earth Miss Marple. Here, she is tasked with determining who wanted a wealthy businessman (Kenneth Cranham) dead — and the list of suspects is quite long. But her job is also a quite personal one as young maid named Gladys, from St. Mary Mead, has been murdered as well. McKenzie's Marple is sharp as ever, but perhaps without the acerbic edge that McEwan brought to the role. The impressive list of guest stars includes Rupert Graves, Matthew MacFadyen, and Helen Baxendale.


The final Marple episode in the collection is 2010's "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side." One of the best entries in the Marple series, the mystery finds the villagers of St. Mary Mead starstruck when a Hollywood actress (Lindsay Duncan), and her director husband, move to town. Joanna Lumley is clearly having a blast as Miss Marple's dear friend Dolly Bantry, and although the story has some quite tragic elements, there is an overall feeling of brightness and fun to the episode. Caroline Quentin and Hugh Bonneville guest star, and McKenzie proves that she truly is Marple in this third filmed adaptation of the novel (previous entries featured Joan Hickson and Angela Lansbury).

The mysteries in the collection are in all color, 16:9 widescreen format, with stereo sound, and SDH subtitles. The Poirot set has a total running time of approximately 503 minutes and the Marple set approximately 463 minutes. The Marple set includes a bonus booklet insert that includes the recipe for the "Delicious Death" chocolate cake featured in "A Murder Is Announced."

Acorn has released all of the individual mysteries before, and has done so in a wide array of sets. Even so, Agatha Christie's Poirot and Marple: Fan Favorites Collection is a boon for folks who want to dabble in the Agatha Christie mysteries, or who are missing a few of the full sets. The quality of the DVDs is as high as ever, and fans of Christie and British mystery should experience hours of enjoyment from this collection.

i am hercule poirot ...

Article first published as I Am Hercule Poirot ... on Blogcritics.



... Or Miss Marple or Sherlock Holmes or Columbo or Ellery Queen. Fill in the blank with your favorite detective.

On a recent weekend excursion my mom knew that we would be near a place that was important to her and she wanted to hit it on the way back. She wrote the name of the town on a piece of paper and showed it to me. I asked her if she would be able to find the specific place in town. She said, "I hope so."

My mom has dementia and communication is always a challenge. She still at this point knows what is it she wants to say, but she can no longer always get the words to say it. It's beyond frustrating for her, as well as for me, who wants to help, but is not always aware of the context. It's like trying to do a crossword puzzle in a language you are only slightly familiar with. But I like puzzles, so I was happy to give it a shot. Maybe all those years of reading Agatha Christies, John D. McDonalds and Lawrence Blocks would finally pay off as I attempt to unravel this latest mystery.

In the 90s she was a very active member in her local historical society and was instrumental in helping preserve many local buildings and sites and having historical markers erected. She had talked every once in a while about wanting to go visit one of her "things," so I was pretty sure that was what we would be on the lookout for.

So as we were driving back home, I tried my best to find where I think it was that she wanted to go. I remembered on a previous trip about a month ago when we were driving through a quaint shopping district that she had wanted to stop. But as we circled around, looking for parking, it was clear that would be impossible. It was getting late, so I had promised that next time we were in the area we'd come back. I was sure she was referring to this trip and one of her markers. The only problem was that I am still unfamiliar with the area, as my daughter and I just moved here last summer, so I would have to figure out how to find not only the marker, but the street in the shopping district, as my mom wouldn't be able to direct me. But we both love an adventure.

Luckily Florida is mostly a rectangle, so if you drive in one direction long enough you will either be driving towards or away from water, and I knew this was on the ocean side. I got us to the town in question, but at a major intersection I could go north or south. I decided to bet on north, and luckily, after about ten or twelve intersections I was rewarded. Both my mom and my daughter in the back seat started to say that things looked familiar. At the next traffic light we all were sure. I found a parking spot after driving a few blocks and we got out and started to check out the shops. It's a great place for window shopping. There was a puppy store, plenty of nice restaurants, a cool-looking art supply store. We got to a corner and I was ready to cross the street when my mom said, "Well, that's that." "That's what?" "That was it." It was the art supply store, which was closed on Sunday. I was floored, because this wasn't what I was expecting, but I quickly shifted gears and we turned around and picked one of the restaurants for a late lunch.

After lunch we checked out the puppy store, which was open, and I escaped without an overpriced tiny dog, but I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out against the combined puppy love exhibited by my mom and daughter. We got in the car and I headed for home. I was feeling pretty happy with how things worked out. The store wasn't open, but we managed to find it and now we could go back when it was. I know the location and a way to make my mom happy.

As I drove out of the shopping district I heard from the back seat, "Oh!" "What?" "I thought you were going to stop." "Where?" At one of those things that I did." Wait a minute ... "You mean a historical marker?" "Yes." I was floored. Again. Had I been right all along? Was that her original objective? Or were there two? Is this just proof that as "right" as I may get what she is trying to say, I will always miss something? But I just smiled and enjoyed  the irony. After all, we'll be going back.

miss marple is hotter than you think

Article first published as Miss Marple Is Hotter Than You Think on Blogcritics.



It's partly a tribute to the strength of Agatha Christie's characters and stories that Hollywood and its equivalents keep churning out new versions every few years. David Suchet has got a lock on the inimitable Hercule Poirot. Thank goodness for that. He is such a perfect Poirot in every way that I am not able to contemplate someone else trying to step into the Belgian detective's shiny tight patent leather shoes.

Miss Marple, for some reason, has never been as easy to capture. Maybe because the character's description by Christie is as fluffy as the shawls Marple is always knitting. Poirot is specific. In fact he has so many quirks and eccentricities that Christie grew to loathe being forever saddled with him while the public loved him. Miss Marple, apart from being elderly and smart and more than a bit of a snoop doesn't have many other descriptors except blue eyes and white hair. She has been open to interpretation to readers — plug in your favorite little old lady stereotype and add a pink or blue wooly shawl.

Miss Marple has also been open to interpretation by a variety of actresses. Margaret Rutherford made a series of four B&W films in the 1960s. They are very enjoyable and silly comedies, but as any Christie devotee will tell you, they aren't Miss Marple.

Miss Marple saw a surge of popularity in the 1980s. Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack'd (1980) is a good attempt. I enjoy her version of the character, but I think she found a better fit for her vigorous physicality in Jessica Fletcher. Helen Hayes was my perfect physical idea of Miss Marple. She's petite and fluffy and wily. She was in two American made-for-TV movies in the mid-80s. They lack the British locale and polish, but are fun to watch.


Joan Hickson is to me the ultimate Miss Marple, as Suchet is the ultimate Poirot. She may be the least "fluffy" of the portrayers, but she gets everything else very, very right. From 1984 to 1992 she played Marple in 12 movies.

From 2004-2010 creators of the latest Marple series tried to sex up the stories and even Miss Marple herself. They are often confusing to watch, as so much of the original stories have been changed. Geraldine McEwan is a good actress, but her Miss Marple is just creepy to me. Julia McKenzie took over the role after McEwan, a bit more in the manner of Hickson's Marple, but the dramatizations of the stories are still pretty awful. Some of my favorite Christie novels like Towards Zero suddenly have Marple plunked in the middle of them where she doesn't belong. If you love Miss Marple, I'd skip these and find the Hickson versions on DVD.

Apparently these latest Marples weren't deemed sexy enough, because the latest news is that yet another Marple franchise is in the works, this time starring ... Jennifer Garner. The mind boggles. Obviously all previous incarnations of white hair and knitted baby items will have to be tossed out. As a huge Christie fan I should be shaking my head in disgust or outrage, right? Somehow it just makes me laugh and wonder if it might be fun to watch.

The idea is so completely off-the-wall that it might even work. Why the folks behind this production are bothering to trade on the Marple name at all is confusing, but maybe it will provide them with some decent plots to pull from, at the very least. Garner is also producing the film. I wish it had been scaled down to be a TV series instead of a feature film, as that seems to be where this actress shines. Can Garner pull a Robert Downey and mess with a beloved character and still be great? Only time will tell. But somehow, I suspect, the resilient Miss Marple will weather this latest incarnation and turn up again, in another guise, in a year or so.

the secret of chimneys

What is with all the perverted Miss Marples? And by that I mean both sexually and just plain off-course from their original Agatha Christie novels. The latest Marple, The Secret of Chimneys, was actually going along fine, all the way through the first murder, with a great group of actors, both familiar (Edward Fox, Dervla Kirwan) and new (to me, at least—Charlotte Salt, Jonas Armstrong), a marvelous setting, the perfect Clue-like atmosphere—"I was in the drawing room when I heard the shot." And then it totally blew it, introducing an unnecessary sexual subplot, changing the motives for murder, and worst of all, changing the murderer. All of this would have been OK if it had been pulled off with good plotting. But no.


Somehow, no matter who is playing Miss Marple since the wonderful and still definitive Joan Hickson did in the eighties and nineties, a sexual element to the stories has been introduced, actually, forced. Because obviously no one would watch Agatha Christie without more sex, right? That's why we tune in, right? Sheesh. It seems that the folks involved in these shows have taken Miss Marple's kitchen-sink mentality—nothing can shock or surprise the little old lady sleuth, whether it be sex, theft, murder, etc.—and completely missed the point of the character. She has managed to view all of life's experiences just by looking (some might say spying) out her garden window in St. Mary's Mead. All the added incest, love affairs, etc. in these productions are just that—added. And unnecessary. They'd do better to spend screen time delving into the characters. Give the actors something interesting to play. But that would require good writing ...

The funny thing is that Christie's novels have never been devoid of sex. Illicit love affairs (The Hollow, The Murder on the Blue Train) are frequently the cause of murders. There is almost always at least one romance blooming, sometimes two, in the backdrop of all the death and crime and murder. Sometimes the hero or heroine even falls in love with the murderer. There have been lesbian couples (A Murder is Announced) and clearly homosexual men (The Moving Finger), maybe not at the forefront of her plots, but as important characters. She was not exactly progressive, but for a writer who started publishing in the 1920s and ended in the 1970s, she wasn't afraid to explore character, no matter what their sexual preference. But the most recent Marples have not only brought sex to the forefront, and added gay characters (more as a token character, as their sexuality never seems to directly affect the story), but worse than anything, all the changes are done at the expense of the mystery. Which is why most tune in in the first place, for a good puzzle. Christie was renowned for her intricate plotting, ingenious twists and surprise murderers—but when the script has been changed to arbitrarily focus on the biggest-name actor in the cast, then it might as well be Murder She Wrote. Jessica Fletcher wouldn't have put up with this crap, so why is Miss Marple?


Admittedly, the original The Secret of Chimneys, written in 1925, had an extremely convoluted and complicated plot (and no Miss Marple, by the way), involving political intrigue and hidden identities, so it could stand some updating and streamlining for television. I don't mind if a Christie (or any book for that matter) is messed with in a creative way if it makes good television. I love that the Poirots have all been set and styled in the 1930s, and that Hercule Poirot's Catholicism, one of many character details in the books, has actually been brought front and center to add real dimension to David Suchet's portrayal of the Belgian detective. Change is good, if it is done well and for the right reasons. But these new Marples—uh uh.

Related articles

• Agatha Christie's Marple: The Pale Horse, ITV1, 9pm (mirror.co.uk)