Suchet’s wise and warm performance was the through line in a series of varying quality. He may have been vain and imperious, but on screen he was far from the “egocentric little creep” (Christie’s words) who wore on his own creator. Suchet and the “Poirot” writers beefed him up over the years, giving him layers of wit and understated emotion. If you’re not, “Ray Donovan” is on at the same time.Ĭhristie’s character, protagonist of more than 30 novels and many short stories spanning the two world wars, was a bit thin on the page - he was no Holmes or Maigret - and Mr. But why be unkind? If you’re part of the “Poirot” audience, you can soak unashamed in the pleasures of these episodes, carefully calibrated to usher out the detective and the man who has played him for 25 years, David Suchet, with the proper mix of sentiment and reserve. The last season of “Poirot,” beginning Sunday night on PBS (and on the streaming service ), delivers pretty much the same cozy-mystery package as the first, back in 1989.

You could deride this consistency as formulaic, and you’d be right.

We have reached our destination, intact and on time. In the final five 90-minute episodes of “Agatha Christie’s Poirot,” the denouement - the long scene in which the dapper Belgian detective Hercule Poirot explains it all to his puzzled audience, including us - arrives reliably somewhere between 22 and 17 minutes from the end. It's difficult to see how this dramatization can be improved upon.You could almost set your clock by it, if you still had to set a clock. He is not Poirot's mental equal by any means, but admirable in his sympathy, kindness and general embodiment of Englishness, and we can understand Poirot's affection for Hastings. The supporting actors were also very fine, especially Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings - whereas in the stories Hastings, who is usually the narrator, remains a rather sketchy character, here he becomes a genuine person. The writers were responsible for fleshing out the bare bones provided by Christie's stories, but they did it in such a way that the filmed versions flow naturally and seamlessly. Some of the credit for this also goes to the fine writing in the series. Suchet's skill as an actor was such that he was able to turn a rather flat, implausible character (and even fans of Agatha Christie admit that her characters are pretty two-dimensional) into a complex, eccentric but essentially believable person. Every detail of the character was perfect, from the stilted, pedantic delivery to the exquisitely fastidious grooming. Suchet's performance as the fussy little Belgian detective was a joy.

Mystery fans were fortunate in the late 1980s to have no less than 3 definitive television performances to enjoy: Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, and David Suchet as Hercule Poirot.

Poirot series