The Blog
In a previous column, I complained about the disasters that can result when screen adaptations of Christie novels play fast and loose with the original source material. I stand by my whining. However, I feel that I need to follow up my previous, largely negative article with a companion piece describing what I like about Christie film adaptations.
Although there have been a few hiccups along the way, the Poirot series starring David Suchet has been one of the finest programs on television for two decades and counting. The Joan Hickson Miss Marple series is another gold standard for quality ...
- Posted 16 November 2009 at 9:13a.m. GMT
- 1 comment
If you're a fan of Agatha Christie, you've probably read most, if not all, of her stories. But have you tried listening to them? Audiobooks add a new dimension and allow listeners to experience classic Christie stories in new ways. AudioFile, the American magazine dedicated to all things audiobooks, is observing Christie Week by highlighting the best of Agatha Christie audiobooks. To give Christie readers a chance to experience the audio for themselves, we are giving away a free audiobook download of THE CASE OF THE MISSING WILL, read by David Suchet, for the duration of Christie Week ...
- Posted 11 September 2009 at 2:40p.m. GMT
- 0 comments
The movie, stage, and television adaptations of Christie’s work are well known and often discussed amongst Christie fans. A fourth medium, radio, is much more obscure and often ignored. Two of the major overviews of Christie’s work and adaptations of it, Dick Riley and Pam McAllister’s The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie, and Dennis Sanders and Len Lovallo’s The Agatha Christie Companion, discuss the movies, plays, and television adaptations, but both ignore the radio dramas.
This is a terrible shame, because some of the best and most interesting adaptations– as well as some ...
- Posted 14 May 2009 at 6:52a.m. GMT
- 5 comments
On Sunday afternoon at the British Film Institute on London’s Southbank, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple held court. The clue to understanding this most unlikely event lies in the location – David Suchet and Julia McKenzie, the new Miss Marple, were in conversation with Mathew Billington from The Guardian. In a small theatre filled with Christie fans, we’d just watched a glorious Christie double bill on the big screen – two brand new films: the very exotic Appointment with Death followed by the faithfully adapted A Pocket Full of Rye. Poirot’s moustache and Miss Marple’s hat had never ...
- Posted 10 March 2009 at 9:34a.m. GMT
- 7 comments
Those of you who have been alert to news reports in various places, including this site, will be aware that the UK’s ITV Network have asked for another eight Christie films – four Marple films and four Poirot films. Great news, of course. And, yes, of course, you’ll all be wanting to know which titles we’re going to be making. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but the answer is that, as yet, we just don’t know which stories will be in next year’s package – so anyone posting a definitive list on this site or anywhere else ...
- Posted 14 November 2008 at 11:57a.m. GMT
- 43 comments
It’s slightly disturbing to realize that it was a year ago that we embarked on one of the most intensive and demanding projects imaginable: eight ninety-minute television films (four Poirots and four Marples) started production on October 1st 2007, with Mrs McGinty’s Dead filming exteriors in a bleak and blustery autumnal landscape, and actors and crew alike muttering grimly ‘whatever happened to the summer?’ … and here we are, having just started shooting the final film, They Do It With Mirrors, with (predominantly) the same crew making the same complaints about the same weather. Plus ca change …
Except, of ...
- Posted 22 September 2008 at 11:29a.m. GMT
- 15 comments