AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT, A BRITISH MYSTERY DRAMA

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to watch some TV series and she has chosen Agatha Christie's Poirot, one of her favourite ones.

Poirot (also known as Agatha Christie's Poirot) is a British mystery drama television programme that aired on ITV from 8 January 1989 to 13 November 2013.

David Suchet starred as the eponymous detective, Agatha Christie's fictional Hercule Poirot.

Initially produced by LWT, the series was later produced by ITV Studios. The series also aired on VisionTV in Canada and on PBS and A&E in the United States. The programme ran for 13 series and 70 episodes in total; each episode was adapted from a novel or short story by Christie that featured Poirot, and consequently in each episode Poirot is both the main detective in charge of the investigation of a crime, usually murder, and the protagonist who is at the centre of most of the episode's action.

At the programme's conclusion, which finished with Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (based on the 1975 novel Curtain, the final Poirot novel), every major literary work by Christie that featured the title character had been adapted.

Clive Exton in partnership with producer Brian Eastman adapted the pilot. Together, they wrote and produced the first eight series. Exton and Eastman left Poirot after 2001, when they began work on Rosemary & Thyme. Michele Buck and Damien Timmer, who both went on to form Mammoth Screen, were behind the revamping of the series.

The episodes aired from 2003 featured a radical shift in tone from the previous series. The humour of the earlier series was downplayed with each episode being presented as serious drama and saw the introduction of gritty elements not present in the Christie stories being adapted.

Recurrent motifs in the additions included drug use, sex, abortion, homosexuality, and a tendency toward more visceral imagery. Story changes were often made to present female characters in a more sympathetic or heroic light, at odds with Christie's characteristic gender neutrality. 

More information: Agatha Christie

The visual style of later episodes was correspondingly different: particularly, an overall darker tone; and austere modernist or Art Deco locations and decor, widely used earlier in the series, being largely dropped in favour of more lavish settings (epitomised by the re-imagining of Poirot's home as a larger, more lavish apartment).

The series logo was redesigned (the full opening title sequence had not been used since series 6 in 1996), and the main theme motif, though used often, was usually featured subtly and in sombre arrangements; this has been described as a consequence of the novels adapted being darker and more psychologically driven. However, a more upbeat string arrangement of the theme music is used for the end credits of Hallowe'en Party, The Clocks and Dead Man's Folly. In flashback scenes, later episodes also made extensive use of fisheye lens, distorted colours, and other visual effects.

Series 9-12 lack Hugh Fraser, Philip Jackson and Pauline Moran, who had appeared in the previous series (excepting series 4, where Moran is absent).

Series 10 (2006) introduced Zoë Wanamaker as the eccentric crime novelist Ariadne Oliver and David Yelland as Poirot's dependable valet, George -a character that had been introduced in the early Poirot novels but was left out of the early adaptations to develop the character of Miss Lemon. The introduction of Wanamaker and Yelland's characters and the absence of the other characters is generally consistent with the stories on which the scripts were based. Hugh Fraser and David Yelland returned for two episodes of the final series (The Big Four and Curtain), with Philip Jackson and Pauline Moran returning for the adaptation of The Big Four. Zoë Wanamaker also returned for the adaptations of Elephants Can Remember and Dead Man's Folly.

Clive Exton adapted seven novels and fourteen short stories for the series, including The ABC Murders and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which received mixed reviews from critics. 

Anthony Horowitz was another prolific writer for the series, adapting three novels and nine short stories, while Nick Dear adapted six novels. Comedian and novelist Mark Gatiss wrote three episodes and also guest-starred in the series, as have Peter Flannery and Kevin Elyot. Ian Hallard, who co-wrote the screenplay for The Big Four with Mark Gatiss, appears in the episode and also Hallowe'en Party, which was scripted by Gatiss alone.

Florin Court in Charterhouse Square, London, was used as Poirot's fictional London residence, Whitehaven Mansions. The final episode to be filmed was Dead Man's Folly in June 2013 on the Greenway Estate, which was Agatha Christie's home, broadcast on 30 October 2013. Most of the locations and buildings where the episodes were shot were given fictional names.

Suchet was recommended for the part by Christie's family, who had seen him appear as Blott in the TV adaptation of Tom Sharpe's Blott on the Landscape.

Suchet, a method actor, said that he prepared for the part by reading all the Poirot novels and every short story, and copying out every piece of description about the character.

Suchet told The Strand Magazine: What I did was, I had my file on one side of me and a pile of stories on the other side and day after day, week after week, I ploughed through most of Agatha Christie's novels about Hercule Poirot and wrote down characteristics until I had a file full of documentation of the character. And then it was my business not only to know what he was like, but to gradually become him. I had to become him before we started shooting.

During the filming of the first series, Suchet almost left the production during an argument with a director, insisting that Poirot's odd mannerisms (in this case, putting a handkerchief down before sitting on a park bench) be featured; he later said there's no question [Poirot's] obsessive-compulsive.

According to many critics and enthusiasts, Suchet's characterisation is considered to be the most accurate interpretation of all the actors who have played Poirot, and the closest to the character in the books.

More information: The Guardian

In 2007, Suchet spoke of his desire to film the remaining stories in the canon and hoped to achieve this before his 65th birthday in May 2011. Despite speculation of cancellation early in 2011, the remaining books were ultimately adapted into a thirteenth series, adapted in 2013 into 5 episodes, from which Curtain aired last on 13 November. 

A 2013 television special, Being Poirot, centred on Suchet's characterisation and his emotional final episode.

In 2013, Suchet revealed that Christie's daughter Rosalind Hicks had told him she was sure Christie would have approved of his performance.

Agatha Christie's grandson Mathew Prichard commented: Personally, I regret very much that she [Agatha Christie] never saw David Suchet. I think that visually he is much the most convincing and perhaps he manages to convey to the viewer just enough of the irritation that we always associate with the perfectionist, to be convincing!

In 2008, the series was described by some critics as going off piste, though not negatively, from its old format. It was praised for its new writers, more lavish productions and a greater emphasis on the darker psychology of the novels. Significantly, it was noted for Five Little Pigs, adapted by Kevin Elyot, bringing out a homosexual subtext of the novel. Nominations for twenty BAFTAs were received between 1989 and 1991 for series 1-3.

More information: The Guardian

One must seek the truth within -not without.

Hercule Poirot