Agatha Christie's Poirot

Agatha Christie's Poirot (U.S. title Poirot) is a popular British television series starring David Suchet as Agatha Christie's detective character Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by London Weekend Television (LWT). However, from the early 2000s production was credited to Granada Productions (from 2006 known as ITV Productions), due to that company's takeover of LWT in 1994 and the following gradual dissolution of LWT as a separate entity.

Poirot began airing as a television show in 1989. The last of the 36, hour-long episodes produced in five series appeared in 1993. From 1995 to 1997, several longer Poirot specials appeared on TV. Four more Poirot TV movies appeared in 2000 and 2001, with a further four appearing in 2003/4.

Four adaptations were made in 2005: "The Mystery of the Blue Train", "After the Funeral","Cards on the Table", and "Taken at the Flood".

Suchet has indicated his desire to film all the remaining stories in the canon. By most, Suchet's portrayal is considered to be the best and very accurate to the character in the books. Suchet said that he prepared for the part by reading all the Poirot novels and copying out every piece of description about the character.

Recurring cast:

Episodes released in 2003 and thereafter lack Fraser, Jackson and Moran. The absence of their characters (Hastings, Inspector Japp, and Miss Lemon) is consistent with the books on which the scripts are based, but it was through interaction with those characters that many of Poirot's humorous, humanizing idiosyncracies were portrayed in the earlier episodes. The later episodes lack the humor of the earlier as well as their signature theme music, and are written, directed, acted, and scored in a more somber fashion, depicting an older and somewhat darker Poirot.

Since 1989, several notable actors have appeared in Agatha Christie's Poirot, including; Jenny Agutter, Robert Bathurst, Frances Barber, Emily Blunt, Lucy Briers, Peter Capaldi, Anna Chancellor, Stephanie Cole, James D'Arcy, Frances de la Tour, Daisy Donovan, Lindsay Duncan, Christopher Eccleston, Oliver Ford Davies, James Fox, Beth Goddard, Elliott Gould, Elspet Gray, Geraldine James, Celia Imrie, Phyllida Law, Roger Lloyd Pack, Alastair MacKenzie, Paul McGann, Sean Pertwee, Joely Richardson, David Soul, Elizabeth Spriggs, Rachael Stirling, Diana Quick, Zoë Wanamaker (as Ariadne Oliver in Cards on the Table) and Honeysuckle Weeks.

TV episodes

The 52-minute episodes are based on Christie's short stories featuring Poirot, many published in the 1920s. The TV dramatizers considerably embellished the stories' plots and set them in the 1930s instead of the 1920s.

The longer episodes are based on Christie's novels. The chronology of these episodes differs from that of the novels and, as with the shorter episodes, some stories whose book versions were set in other decades are moved to the 1930s.