Update:- The diabolical duo, Prichard and Phelps, were shamelessly speaking on the Today programme this morning. Phelps said she had the advantage of not reading Agatha Christie and only having seen a couple of Poirot adaptations, so she had a fresh view. And I have a fresh view of astrophysics as I am totally ignorant of it.
First episode:- Not as furious as I might have been. As The ABC Murders is a thin novel compared to other Christies, I could take this as a series based very loosely on the original. Really, it's a story about the decline of Poirot, and Malkovich could make good fist of him as the sad old refugee from the horrors of the German invasion of Belgium.
Phelps paints heavy always - the light so green and dim it seemed we were in a permanent forest dripping with treacle, the music howled and banged and the atmosphere of a malevolent world included a landlady as creepy and weird as Igor minus the hump and her daughter a pathetic tart (in the book they are kindly and ordinary). Betty is tarted up from silly flirt to cock-teasing bitch - also was "dozy bastard" a common insult in the 1930s? And would the housekeeper employed by the gentry say, "Get off your skinny arse" to a secretary? Gentility and respectability were greatly valued in those times, a covering for normal hatred and malice.
I wonder if that was the first outing of the serial murderer who has become such a staple in crime drama, always murdering in threes or fours? And the type who leaves deliberate clues, so you get death methods reflecting a medieval curse or some such thing. I'll stick with it, as I do like Malkovich and his weary ways. So far Poirot has had his train ticket deliberately dropped by a conductor with a fascist badge, but we haven't had any actual blackshirts kicking up. The action has been shifted from 1935 to (gasp) 1933 so we must get Moseley and his gang. That the landlady has been going to a meeting suggests she will be the house Fash.
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Writing an adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express for the BBC, except it's called Murder on the Orientalist Express and it's just 90 minutes of Hercule Poirot reading Edward Said aloud.
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