Teresa Reviews Five Little Pigs (2022)

Teresa Reviews Five Little Pigs (2022), the Checkmate episode titled “Infidelity and Murder in the Wealthy Family”

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 3½ poisoned cocktails

All five pigs have a counterpart to varying degrees but there’s more than one would-be murderer.

Quality of film: 3½ poisoned cocktails

This episode showcased the conflicting emotions and was paced better. Bad subtitling lost it half a poisoned cocktail.

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

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

For this adaptation, Checkmate didn’t waste much time. No extraneous stories were introduced to pad out Agatha’s plots as in previous episodes. We didn’t get nearly as much soap either, involving Luo Shaochuan’s family travails with his matchmaking, social-climbing aunt. Instead, this set of episodes flowed nicely from the previous installments.

Because of the posh girls’ school murders and their connection to Fengtian, Luo Shaochuan had requested police records from Fengtian. A pile awaits on his desk. In the aftermath of the poisoned meat-sauce spaghetti case, Luo had also asked for the records of the unsolved murders in Harbin. He began looking through the unsolved cases in Harbin, to learn which ones he and Situ Yan should start with.

Lo and behold, a case appears connecting Fengtian, an old murder with puzzling discrepancies, and Zhou Mowan. She’s never revealed her past, appears to have no family, refuses to say where she’s from, and doesn’t want to get close to anyone, including Situ Yan.

A huge piece of her past appeared in the Fengtian files. Her mother, Fang Huaijin (Caroline Crale) murdered her father, Zhou Ze (Amyas Crale), a famous painter. Mom insisted that Zhou Ze committed suicide and she was innocent right up to her execution by firing squad.

What led up to that circle of rifles in the Fengtian prison in the snow? Zhou Ze had moved Ge Ai (Elsa Greer), a Russian model and muse into the family home and studio and began a torrid affair. He was smitten with this exotic beauty who’d be his masterpiece, despite him not having previously painted portraits.

Zhou Mowan (Carla Crale) was about 8 years old when the tragedy took place. An Qiuzi (Angela Warren) was about 10. She’s Caroline’s much-younger half-sister. The single servant in the mansion is Xi Wanzhi (governess Cecilia Williams) who saw everything. Zhou Ze and Fang Huaijin’s friends live next door; Lawyer Li Yuanpu (Philip Blake) and his brother, Doctor Li Yuanshun (Meredith Blake). They witnessed everything and disapproved of what they saw.

This was a case made for Situ Yan and not just because it involves Zhou Mowan, with whom he’s falling madly in love despite not being any good at it. The case has oddities which catch his attention. And, providentially, Lawyer Li Yuanpu is someone he knows by reputation because they both studied law under the tutelage of Shen Jianxian although at different times. Li Yuanpu defended Fang Huaijin on murder charges. Despite losing the case, he knows plenty of details not included in the skimpy dossier.

The question you’ll have and it’s eventually answered is: Why didn’t Zhou Mowan ask Situ Yan for help earlier? She’s been living under the cloud of her mother murdering her father for years. She provides an answer but it’s not complete. She doesn’t discuss where she’s been since she and her nearly-the-same-age aunt were put on a train and shipped off to distant relatives in the countryside. An Quizi made it safely. Zhou Mowan disappeared at the age of eight. But where was she? Who took her in? And what did they do to her?

There are no answers yet, but we’ll assume they’ll show up. Eventually. What the lack of answers about Zhou Mowan’s past does is amplify her emotions about the tragedy. Her idyllic childhood was destroyed and then — compounding her grief and rage — she was cast out to the wolves because no one cared what happened to her. Or so she thought.

When she learns that Situ Yan and Luo Shaochuan are investigating, under the pretext of returning the unneeded casefiles to the Fengtian police department, she’s very upset. They’re raking up terrible memories and she’s sure it’s to humiliate her still further.

Gradually, the truth is revealed to her and to Situ Yan. What first reconciles her to Situ Yan’s investigation is he uncovers a letter that her mother had written to her from prison. The arresting officer had kept it; she’d disappeared and he had no one to pass it along to. She can read a lost message from her lost mother, the only contact she’s had in years.

Lawyer Li Yuanpu remembers little Zhou Mowan well and is helpful. He insists that Fang Huaijin insisted on pleading not guilty, even though she’d have gotten a lighter sentence because of the extenuating circumstances. His brother, the doctor, also fills in critical details, including how he distilled poisons in his home laboratory.

The team learns the whereabouts of Xi Wanzhi. She’s overjoyed to learn that Zhou Mowan is still alive and begs forgiveness for trusting relatives to take care of her. All these years, she’d been afraid that Zhou Mowan was also dead.

Luo Shaochuan even locates An Qiuzi, now married, living in Shanghai, and on her way to France. But when An Qiuzi learns that her beloved sister/niece was still alive, she comes at once to Fengtian to see her again. But the case’s investigation leads to the possibility that An Qiuzi had murdered Zhou Ze. Zhou Mowan is suspicious and angry, unwilling to accept what she’s heard.

The team even get Ge Ai to come from Russia.

As you’d expect if you’re familiar with the novel, Ge Ai did poison Zhou Ze when she learned he had no intention of divorcing his wife and marrying her. But this isn’t the solution. She was guilty of attempted murder, not murder.

It was Lawyer Li Yuanpu who poisoned his best friend and ensured a shoddy defense for his best friend’s wife. Li Yuanpu had fallen in love with Ge Ai and couldn’t stand watching Zhou Ze’s selfish treatment of her. If you read the novel closely, this rewrite doesn’t come from out of left field. Philip Blake was always conflicted about his relationship with Amyas and Caroline, loving them both and getting neither. At the same time, his brother Meredith also loved them both but he fell in love with Elsa Greer and asked her to marry him during the trial. She shrugged him off as a boring wet blanket. Give Meredith’s emotions to Philip and you can see where the revised motive and plot came from and that it works.

What didn’t work was the rewrite of Amyas Crale into Zhou Ze. There are hints along the way that he’s cheated before on Fang Huaijin. But he complains constantly about her, her demands, Ge Ai’s demands, women in general, and states any sane man shouldn’t marry because women are such a pain in the ass. I got a sense he loved his daughter. I didn’t get a sense that Zhou Ze loved his wife. Or Ge Ai. Or anyone else besides himself. I did not see the great love affair between him and Fang Huaijin that made her tolerate his infidelity and general jerkiness. The other two versions of Five Little Pigs make it clear that while Amyas Crale will stray, he’ll always come home to Caroline because she is home. Not here.

We did get to see the painting but it demonstrated that Zhou Ze should have stuck to landscapes.

I’d have liked this better if the subtitles hadn’t been so maddeningly quick, tiny, and incomplete. I’m sure I missed details that were obvious to a Chinese audience. Even so, this is Agatha as you’ve never seen her before.