Teresa Reviews Behind the Scenes: Agatha Christie’s Poirot (2005)

Teresa reviews Behind the Scenes: Agatha Christie’s Poirot (2005) and Poirot and Me shorts

(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel

Are they entertaining? 4 Agathas

They were all too short! I could have spent much more time with David Suchet and company.

Is it educational? 4 Agathas

You’ll get some understanding about what a mammoth undertaking it was to film all the Poirot stories and novels.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

One of the interesting side effects of playing Hercule Poirot is that it made David Suchet — a respected, hardworking character actor on stage, TV, and film — a star. A big star. A star who still gets fan letters from around the world. A star whose TV show is always airing sometime, somewhere, in the world. A star who had Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, show him how to cut and eat a mango while dining with Queen Elizabeth II. A star who magnified his character’s already famous persona into a supernova. A star who leaped out of “I’ve seen that guy before” into “Oh my God! It’s David Suchet!” territory. A star who makes it difficult to conceive that anyone else could ever play Hercule Poirot, even though many other actors have done just that. A star who sold millions of copies of Agatha’s books by introducing her to a mass audience.

There’s only David Suchet. Sir Kenneth Branagh, waving a gun while wearing wool roving fresh from the sheep as his mustache? No. John Malkovich, dying his gray mustache and goatee, while playing Poirot as a has been and a liar? Not him either. Peter Ustinov who was Poirot in six films? Disappearing into the past. Albert Finney with only one film, even if it was a doozy? Vanishing into obscurity.

But as long as Agatha lives, Suchet’s masterful portrayal of Poirot will live on because of its volume and quality. The production company filmed virtually everything Agatha wrote about Poirot, providing hundreds of hours to fill TV airtime.

According to his memoir, Poirot and Me, Suchet was vetted by Agatha’s daughter, Rosalind Christie Prichard Hicks. She knew her mother would have approved of this Poirot and, except for Suchet’s brown eyes instead of Poirot’s green eyes, he’s spot on.

He worked at it, studying every single word Agatha wrote about Poirot. He made himself into a Poirot expert in dress, walk, voice, attitude, and perfectionism. David Suchet used his little gray cells to their fullest to become the definitive Poirot.

Watching the documentaries Suchet made emphasized how hard he worked to become Poirot. They also shine a light on everyone else, because making TV shows is art by committee. It’s a team effort and the actors in front of the camera are the end of a long creative process.

For this review we watched 10 Suchet-specific documentaries. He filmed Behind the Scenes (45 minutes long) while the production company was filming season 10 consisting of Mystery of the Blue Train, After the Funeral, Cards on the Table, and Taken at the Flood, which aired in 2006. You’ll get far too-short interviews with the stars of each film along with the producer, director, writer, and folks who are vital to how a finished film looks and sounds but aren’t known outside the industry except to film buffs.

Despite what the film description implies, the bulk of the interviews took place while filming Blue Train. Some of it was shot on location in Menton, a town in the French Riviera. Later, they’ll show the movie magic that transformed a British railway station into a French one, and a train traveling the British countryside into the French landscape.

Blue Train is far from Agatha favorite novel. She famously said she thought less of fans who gushed over it, written during some of her darkest moments. But it’s a good novel and the production company made it into a sparkling, lighter-than-air film. Watching the scenes being filmed will make you want to watch it again.

Much less time is devoted to After the Funeral, which is a pity as it has one of Agatha’s most sympathetic murderers. I won’t call her a villain because Miss Gilchrist is proof that, like in the real world, anyone can be a murderer when the provocation is right. It’s hard to see her as a villain even if she did murder her awful boss. But alas, you won’t get an interview with Monica Dolan. I don’t know why. Why does one actress get chosen over another for these behind the scenes looks?

Cards on the Table is next. I enjoyed Zoë Wanamaker’s interview as Ariadne Oliver. She’s such a great foil for Poirot, and as Suchet points out, she’s the only person he calls by her given name. With everyone else, he’s more formal. Alexander Siddig as Mr. Shaitana gets significant screen time and he makes the most of it. Too bad the writer mucked up the film’s ending so badly.

Taken at the Flood gets the least amount of airtime in the documentary which is okay because that film was such a disappointment. Changing the time of the film undercut the financial turmoil in the characters’ lives that forced them to behave in terrible ways. Read the novel instead: It’s fantastic and Agatha shows, again, how she plays with the tropes of a genre mystery and elevates it into something more.

We also watched the nine short documentaries David Suchet filmed for ITV called Poirot and Me. I’m not sure how and when these aired. We found them on the DVD sets our library owned. They’re each about five minutes long, and consist largely of David Suchet sitting on a couch reminiscing about the show.

It sounds dull, but it’s not. Each 5-minute short is devoted to a different topic. You get:

1. How It All Began. Suchet discusses how he was selected for the role and developing his vision of Poirot.

2. My Most Intriguing Mystery. Suchet talks about The ABC Murders.

3. My Most Humorous Episode. This one’s about the filming of The Veiled Lady (1990) where Poirot reveals his complete lack of scruples when he needs to find the truth. Poirot on a bicycle! Poirot tossed in jail!

4. My Favorite Male Star. Two of them, actually, and they’re who you’d expect: Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings and Philip Jackson as Inspector Japp.

5. My All-Time Favorite. This one is Death on the Nile (2004). Suchet got the ship wrong — the S.S. Karnak is played by the Steamship Sudan, not the paddleship Memnon which starred as the Karnak in Peter Ustinov’s film.

6. My Loneliness as Poirot. Suchet believes Poirot is essentially alone, by choice and by circumstance.

7. My Favorite Leading Lady. He chose Elisabeth Dermot Walsh who played Elinor Carlisle in Sad Cypress (2003). A fabulous film, one of the best.

8. Poirot Almost Gets It Wrong. Poirot makes his mistakes — he often admits he’s an imbecile! But he always gets it right in the end.

9. My Most Challenging Location. Poirot collapses in the heat while filming Murder in Mesopotamia (2002) and also struggles with tight train sets on Blue Train.

These shorts are very short and the film quality is terrible, but they’re worth watching for insight into how the Poirot TV series ended up being so good. So many people cared very much to produce the very best TV they could.