Podcast appearances and mentions of David Suchet

Join us as Ben, Tiago, and Rose cover the inspirations behind Ace Attorney! This episode we're diving into the LWT/ITV production of Agatha Christie's Poirot, starring the legendary David Suchet! We're immediately tickled by the intro, Suchet's performance, and the additions and expansions of the cast that make for some solid television! Not only do we discuss the main plot and wacky Australian lawyer decoy plot, we also get into discussions on allergies, how various detectives might use Letterboxd, and TMNT coffins. You know, normal stuff. NEXT TIME: Agatha Christie's Poirot - S01E09 "The King of Clubs" Follow us online: aceattorney.bsky / aceattorneypod.tumblr.com / updatedautopsy.report Watch Ben, Dessy, & Iro's Let's Plays of the series on YouTube here! Want a shirt? Check out our store here! Ben: yotsuben.bsky Dessy: dessy.bsky Rose: rosenonsense.bsky Tiago: tiagotime.bsky / linktr.ee

Warning: SPOILERS! Or, as they call it, “Puzzle at End House.” Anatoliy Ravikovich plays the high-fiving, ice-cream loving Poirot who inserts himself into a young woman's life who experiences life-threatening events. Can he stop the peril in time or will it be too perilous?“Agatha Christie, They Watch” reviews the adaptations of Agatha Christie's novels in their order of publication.Teresa Peschel, author of "Agatha Christie, She Watched" and the "International Agatha Christie, She Watched," hosts our livestream. Joining Teresa is her husband, technical adviser, and straight man, Bill Peschel. Together, they are Peschel Press, publisher of intriguing, intelligent, and idiosyncratic books (www.peschelpress.com).HOW TO SEE THIS MOVIE: Watch it on YouTube with AI subtitles, courtesy of John Hisman: https://youtu.be/8e92jROtHIw WHERE TO FIND USPeschel Press: www.peschelpress.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/peschel_press/NEXT WEEK: It's David Suchet's turn at “The Peril at End House” (1990) HOW TO SEE IT: Your local library could have DVDs of the Poirot series. Look for Season 2, Episode 1. Or, Amazon Prime's Acorn channel has it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0FP94WD85/AcornTV's streaming channel also makes it available: https://acorn.tv/poirot/series2/peril-at-end-house/LOOK UP OUR BOOKS“Agatha Christie, She Watched” is our coffee-table sized book and not coffee-table sized ebook collection of Teresa's reviews of Christie's movie and TV adaptations. Agatha Christie, She Watched: https://peschelpress.com/agatha-christie-she-watched/International Agatha Christie, She Watched: https://peschelpress.com/international-agatha-christie-she-watched/DISCLAIMER: FAIR USE. Title 17, US Code (Sections 107-118 of the copyright law) All media in this video is used for the purpose of review and commentary under the terms of fair use. All footage, music and images used belong to their respective owners.Theme music: "Deadly Roulette" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

There's double value on this week's show as the lads brought two facts each. Dave wants to rave about the bustopia that is Bogotá, Columbia but goes down a dark route.Neil demonstrates the lengths and depths actors will go to prepare for a role with the story of how David Suchet perfected Hercule Poirot's signature walk.Sources:https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/07/headway/bogota-bus-system-transmilenio.htmlhttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-34259108https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2013/nov/05/hercule-poirot-david-suchet-bottom-coin-agatha-christieSupport the show on Patreon for the weekly bonus episode.https://www.patreon.com/cw/WhyWouldYouTellMeThathttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-34259108To listen to Dave on the radio check outhttps://www.todayfm.com/shows/dave-mo...To see Neil on tour check outhttps://www.neildelamere.com/reinvent...Presented and Produced by Neil Delamere and Dave MooreEdited by Diarmuid O'BrienMusic by Dave MooreArtwork by Ray McDonnell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What a delight to talk to laura thompson about Agatha Christie. Above all, this episode was fun. Laura really does know more than anyone about Agatha and we covered a lot. What did Agatha Christie read? What did she love about Shakespeare? Was she pro-hanging? Why so much more Poirot than Marple? Why was she so productive during the war? We also talked Wagner, modern art, the other Golden Age writers, nursery rhymes, TV adaptations, poshness, nostalgia, Mary Westmacott, and plenty more. TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to the very splendid Laura Thompson. All of you will know Laura's Substack. She has also written books about the Mitfords, heiresses, Lord Lucan, many other subjects, and most importantly today, Agatha Christie, who died 50 years ago. And there's a new book coming from Laura about Agatha Christie's 1926 disappearance.Laura, welcome.LAURA THOMPSON: So lovely to be here, Henry. I'm such a fan of your Substack, as you know.OLIVER: Well, same. Same. This is a mutual admiration call.THOMPSON: Well, thank you. Well, that's what we like.Christie's Favorite WritersOLIVER: Now tell me, what did Agatha Christie like to read?THOMPSON: Oh, a lot the same as us. I discovered she was a huge fan of Elizabeth Bowen, as we are. And Nancy Mitford, Muriel Spark. But her big love really was Dickens. She absolutely adored Dickens. I mean, she grew up in a house full of books, you know, and she wrote a screenplay of Bleak House for which she was handsomely paid. And it was never—I know, don't you long to know what that was like? Can you imagine—OLIVER: We've lost it? We don't have the typescript?THOMPSON: I've never seen it. I mean, maybe—I don't know whether it exists somewhere. But I just wonder how she tackled it, what she did. But yes, so that happened. And of course, Shakespeare, as we know from her books, which are full of subliminal and—I mean, you kind of notice them, but you don't have to.OLIVER: Yes. There's Shakespeare in every book?THOMPSON: No, but it's there, particularly Macbeth, which I suppose figures.OLIVER: Yeah.THOMPSON: Like The Pale Horse is completely Macbeth themed. And when I was a kid reading them, I think she really—Tennyson she uses a lot—she affected my reading in a good way.OLIVER: She sent you back to Shakespeare and the poets?THOMPSON: Well, sent me to them as a kid, probably. And also, there's a lot of Bible in her books, as I'm sure you've noticed.OLIVER: Yes. Yes.THOMPSON: Very easy facility with quoting the Bible.Christie and ShakespeareOLIVER: Now, what did she learn from Shakespeare? Because she clearly knows the plays in detail. She sees them a lot. She reads them. She and he are, I think, quite good plotters.THOMPSON: Is she even better than he is?OLIVER: Well, let's not get into that. But there is a sort of, in a funny way, a kind of affinity between them as writers.THOMPSON: That's so interesting.OLIVER: What do you think she learned from him?THOMPSON: Tell me how you—how you see that.OLIVER: Well, do you know that Margaret Rutherford adaptation, which probably you don't like and I do—THOMPSON: Go on.OLIVER: It's called Murder Most Foul, isn't it?THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And there's something about the way that they can both walk the line between the sort of dark and deadly and the histrionic. Margaret Rutherford can't walk that line, but Agatha Christie can, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting.OLIVER: And Miss Marple could come onstage in a couple of the plays. She's not so far off from being a Queen Margaret or some—in her angry moments maybe, do you think?THOMPSON: More rational, maybe.OLIVER: Much more rational.THOMPSON: Not so mad. Well, she's not mad, Margaret, is she? But she's upset.OLIVER: She starts off as a much sort of nastier character—Murder at the Vicarage, right?THOMPSON: Yes, she does. She was more acidic and then gradually—OLIVER: Waspish.THOMPSON: Waspish, and sort of mellowed. I see what you mean. And almost in the way that she calls herself—although that's obviously not Shakespeare—calls herself Nemesis.OLIVER: And the sense of atmosphere.THOMPSON: Yes, and the way they're structured. That's not necessarily just true of Shakespeare, but there is this sort of act three entanglement and this beautiful act five resolution that goes on with a soliloquy, I suppose.OLIVER: And some people think they both get confused in act four, but that's obviously not true, that this is the real mess of the plot. I think she might have learned quite a lot from Shakespeare, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting. But, you know, the way she writes about Shakespeare in her letters to her second husband, Max, because when she was living in London during the war and almost at her most productive—I mean, her productivity levels are insane. And hitting every ball for six, really, you know: Towards Zero, Five Little Pigs, a couple of Westmacotts, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But she spent a lot of time going on her own to see Shakespeare.She's very—I hope I'm right in saying this—she's very sort of Ernest Jones [CB1] in her approach. She doesn't regard them so much as the products of words on a page; she regards them as rounded characters. Why were Goneril and Regan the way they were? What's wrong with Ophelia? You feel like saying, “Well, whatever Shakespeare wanted it to be,” but she sees them in that way. And Iago particularly—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —is the one that gets her. Yes. In one of her, I better not say which, but a major, major novel.And the book that she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree, which I think might well be her best book of all. I think—well, I'll just say she wrote these six books under a pseudonym, Mary Westmacott. People call them romantic novels; that's sort of the last thing they are. And they're very, very interesting mid-20th-century human condition novels, and they're full of lots of stuff that she had to distill for the detective fiction. And she talks a lot about Iago in The Rose and the Yew Tree really interestingly, I think.Christie on Shakespeare?OLIVER: Now, Max said she should just write a book about Shakespeare, all this Shakespeare all the time. But she didn't. Why?THOMPSON: No. I don't think she ever liked being told what to do.OLIVER: [laughs]THOMPSON: His letters to her are quite annoying, aren't they?OLIVER: Yes, yes. I've only read what's in your book, but yes, I didn't warm to him.THOMPSON: I'm glad because people do. He gets a really good press even though he was unfaithful. But it worked, the marriage, because they both got what they wanted from it. But he said that, yes, and she says, “Oh no, they're just thoughts for you.” I don't think she would've felt the need, somehow. I think she liked saying things in her own more oblique way.OLIVER: Save it for the novels.THOMPSON: Yes, she's a great mistress of the indirect, I think, really. The way she writes about Macbeth in The Pale Horse, which I think is a really underrated novel, including thoughts on how it should be staged, which are really interesting and very, very good. I think she would've preferred to do that and use it to her ends.And of course, she has an incredibly powerful sense of evil, which I suppose is also in Shakespeare. Hers is a Christian sensibility, I mean, no question. People never talk about that, but it really is.OLIVER: Was she pro hanging?THOMPSON: Well, I think she took a kind of utilitarian approach that the innocent must be protected. And she took a view that if you've killed once, it becomes very easy to kill again because something in you has shifted, so you become a danger to the community. So I suppose in that sense she was.I mean, Miss Marple was. She's quite—“I really feel quite glad to think of him being hanged.”OLIVER: It's one of her most striking lines.THOMPSON: It is, isn't it?OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: So I suppose she was. I mean, I suppose she was. You know, she's very modern, she's very subtle in her thinking, but at the same time, she is a late Victorian product of her society. Yes.Dickens and Christie's FamilyOLIVER: Now, you mentioned this Bleak House script. She loved Bleak House. Do we know what she loved about it? It's obviously the first detective novel. Are there other factors?THOMPSON: You are going to know—this is when I'm going to start coming across as an idiot. Is it written before The Moonstone? Yes, of course it is.OLIVER: I think so. Yes. Yes. It's the first time there's a police detective in a major English novel.THOMPSON: Okay. I think she—do you know, this is a really good question. I don't actually know why she loved Dickens so much. She grew up—she had that rather intriguing upbringing whereby she had two much older siblings, a sister who was 11 years older, a brother who was 10 years older. Father died when she was 11.So she grew up incredibly close with a really rather intriguing mother, Clara. This is in the house at Torquay. And her mother encouraged her in a way that, it seems to me, quite unusual for the time and for the class to which she belonged. Because it was never deemed that it would interfere with her marrying and leading a more conventional life. But she always wanted to express herself creatively. And I think her mother possibly was a frustrated creative. I don't know. She had a lot of go in her.And whether it was just something she read with—I think anything she did at an early age with her mother would've made a huge impression on her. I think what you read when you're that age, you never quite—I never read Dickens at that age, so I've never quite got the habit.OLIVER: But if she's born in 1890, presumably her mother is just about old enough to have been alive when Dickens was alive. And so she's got a somewhat direct—THOMPSON: Yes, she was.OLIVER: You know, it's sort of back to the original culture of it, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes. Isn't that extraordinary?OLIVER: Yes. Yes. It's crazy to think. So she must have taken it in maybe in a more original way, somehow?THOMPSON: Possibly. Certainly Tennyson, I get that feeling, because her mother wrote this rather leaden sub-Tennysonian poetry. [laughter] It's like Tennyson on the worst day he ever had, but worse than that.OLIVER: But worse, yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And she wrote poetry like that, the mother, which is really rather sweet and touching to read. And obviously she would've been alive at the same time as Tennyson. So, yes, I'd never, ever thought of that before. Isn't that extraordinary? I mean, they went to see Henry Irving.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And yet she feels—it just amazes me, this—so I'm leaping slightly here, but this 21st-century halo of cool that she has around her, Agatha Christie. [laughter] I know, it's awful in a way, but the way she can be reinterpreted—that is a bit Shakespearean, in a way.I don't mean to make extravagant claims, but there's a sort of translucent quality to what she writes that means that people can impose and pull it and twang it and know that she won't let them down, as we are seeing constantly at the moment.Art and MusicOLIVER: Yes. No, I agree. Other arts—we know about all this, she loves reading. What music did she enjoy, for example? Did she like paintings?THOMPSON: Yes, she loved paintings. She liked modern art. She was painted by Kokoschka. It's very good. And she writes about modern art. In Five Little Pigs, the painter in that is a modern artist.And then music was her grand passion. I mean, music was her original career choice, as you know, of course. She must have had a good voice. She thought she could make a career of it. And she could play the piano. Beautiful piano at Greenway, it's still there.And they used to do this thing—I think it's a lovely idea—as a family. They would fill in what they called the book of confessions, and it would be questions like, “What is your state of mind? If not yourself, who would you be?” And at the age of 63, which is the last time she filled it in, she wrote, “An opera singer.” So that was still what she would've dreamed of doing. She loved Wagner very, very deeply.OLIVER: Okay. Interesting.THOMPSON: And there's a Wagner theme in a very late book, Passenger to Frankfurt, the one that everybody hates except me. And music, I mean, as a girl when—so her voice wasn't strong enough for opera. I think her ultimate—same as I grew up wanting to be a ballet dancer, I think her ultimate would've been to sing Isolde at Covent Garden.And in some of her short stories and in her first Mary Westmacott, which is called Giant's Bread, which is about a musician—and she really inhabits this character, Vernon, and it's all about modern music. And somebody who knew about this stuff, which I don't, told me, “No, she knew. She knew what was going on. She knew about the trends.” This is in the late twenties.And she always went to Beirut, and that was her real, real, real passion. She was one of those restlessly creative people. And her mother, God bless her, encouraged it.Christie's UniquenessOLIVER: What is it that distinguishes her from the other detective fiction writers? Because she doesn't, to me, feel—she's obviously part of this whole generation, this whole golden age, whatever you want to call it, but she doesn't feel the same as them somehow.THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: What is that?THOMPSON: Do you think it's her simplicity, that distilled simplicity that she has? She doesn't write linear; she writes geometric, I always think.OLIVER: Tell me what you mean.THOMPSON: Well, if you think of a book, the one I admire the most, as I constantly go on about, which is Five Little Pigs—you think about the amount of stuff that's in that book. It's a meditation on art versus life. The solution is unbelievably intriguing, I think. There's a whole family psychodrama in there. And every move of the plot, she's also moving on a—every move of the plot is impelled by a revelation of character. So plot and character are utterly intertwined, distilled together.I don't think any of the others can do that. I think Dorothy Sayers would take twice as many pages. And she'd dot every i and cross every t, and she couldn't bear loose ends or anything, could she? And she liked to reveal her knowledge of other things, almost to—I think the others like you to know that they're a bit better than the genre, maybe. Their detectives are superhuman, almost; wish-fulfillment man, almost.She doesn't do that with Poirot. He's just pure omniscience, really, plus a few tics and traits and, you know, mustache. I think it's that distillation and simplicity and the way she inhabits the genre in a way that the others don't quite do. And at the same time, she's redefining it from within.OLIVER: There's something as well, I think, about—she gets past the kind of Sherlock Holmes model in a different way. They still all have a bit of an overreliance on that, maybe.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: Whereas Poirot in, what is it? In something like, is it Murder in the Mews? Very sort of Sherlock and Watson—THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: —kind of dynamic. But within, I don't know, two or three novels, that's gone, and he's Poirot as we know him, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes, yes.OLIVER: And she kind of, as you say, makes it her own thing and goes off in new directions.Christie and the TheaterTHOMPSON: Yes. She's sort of conceptual and the others aren't quite, I think. She doesn't do—she does something completely different with the whole concept of what a solution is, it seems to me. She doesn't—it's not Cluedo, is it? It's not, there's six of them, and eventually it has to be one of them; however many tergiversations or however you say that word, you sort of know that. Whereas with her, it's: it's nobody, or it's everybody, or it's the policeman, or it's a child, or there's something bigger and bolder going on.And she writes—I think she writes very theatrically. I think she writes scenically. I think she's incredibly good at character and action. That scene where you know the girl's a thief because Poirot leaves out 23 pairs of silk stockings, and he goes back in the room and there's 19 or something like that, tells you everything. It's all in there.OLIVER: The solution to 4.50 from Paddington, which we shan't reveal, but—THOMPSON: That's Cards on the Table. But what I mean is, she's given us a little scene that tells us all we need to know about that person, really: a sort of timid thief who can't resist—OLIVER: Yes, but that's what I'm saying. At the end of 4.50, the solution is staged.THOMPSON: Oh, sorry. Yes.OLIVER: It is literally a little re-creation of the drama, if you see what I mean.THOMPSON: Yes, I do. Sorry, Henry. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: No, no. We're crossed wires.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, yes.OLIVER: But she is very theatrical, yes.THOMPSON: No, you are absolutely right. That's a reenactment.OLIVER: Of something that was seen almost like in a—you know, the whole thing is very—THOMPSON: Yes, yes. Well, she was a great—I mean, obviously Shakespeare, but she was a great lover of the theater as a medium. And of course, she wrote plays, as we know, which I think are far weaker than her books, myself.OLIVER: Even The Mousetrap?THOMPSON: Especially. [laughter] When did you last see it? Or have you not—OLIVER: I've seen it once. I've seen it—you know, I don't know, before I had children, a long time ago. And I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun. The ending of act one, when someone opens a door and they say, “Oh, it's you.” It's very dramatic moments. You don't like it?THOMPSON: No, I think you're right. I wouldn't mind seeing it done really, really well. There's something strong at the heart of it, that theme that haunts a lot of her books about what happens to children who are unwanted.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Which is in loads of her—no, not loads. It's in Ordeal by Innocence. It's in Mrs. McGinty. That's, I think, because that happened to her mother. Her mother was given away as a child. Her own mother was a poor widow and gave up her daughter to be raised by her rich sister, which is not—it's not abandonment, but I think—OLIVER: Well, yes.THOMPSON: — it's not great. And I think all these things were absorbed by Agatha as a child. She grew up in what we would today call a house of—I hate this—strong women. I hate that “strong woman” thing, but they were strong women. Her mother was very, you know, as we've said, a sort of driving little person. And the rich grandmother, the poor sister, the dynamic there, they both fed into Miss Marple.And then her older sister, Madge, who was a big personality and actually had a play on in the West End before Agatha did, which I've always thought was extraordinary, just to write a play and have it on in the West End in 1924.And the men were—the father was feckless and charming and a rather grand New Yorker, he grew up as, and then settled in Torquay. And the brother was the Branwell Brontë. [laughter] He ended up a drug addict, which is also a type that feeds into her fiction: the man who could have made something of his life and goes wrong.The TV AdaptationsOLIVER: So all this theatricality in the books is obviously why she adapts so well to TV, and again, a lot of the others don't.THOMPSON: Yes, that's true.OLIVER: How famous would she be now without the TV adaptations?THOMPSON: Well, by 1990, so the centenary, she was a hell of a lot less—and that's really when the Poirots got going, which she never wanted. She never wanted—she didn't really want Murder on the Orient Express. It was only because it came via Lord Mountbatten. I don't know. I don't know because I think they're mostly not very good. I don't know what you think about the adaptations. But maybe that's deliberate, that they're less—if they drove you back to the books, you'd probably get quite a pleasant surprise.OLIVER: It's hard for me to say because I saw them all more or less after I'd finished reading her.THOMPSON: What did you think?OLIVER: I love Joan Aiken—not Joan Aiken, what's she called?THOMPSON: Yes, Joan Hickson is marvelous. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Hickson. I think she's just perfect because as you say, the simplicity, the not overstating. The “Pocketful of Rye” episode where she turns up and quotes the Bible, and the vicious older sister is there, and they have that moment. It's all so cleanly done.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree.OLIVER: David Suchet, I quite like him. I think he has those wonderful moments. “I cannot eat these eggs. They are not the same.” I think that's very good. It's very funny, you know, he gets it.THOMPSON: You prefer him in spats and art deco mode to when he became—he became like a de facto member of the House of Atreus by the end, hadn't he? It had gone very, very—OLIVER: I mean, I certainly didn't watch them all, no, no.THOMPSON: No. Well, I sort of had to.OLIVER: Yes, you did.THOMPSON: But I could never get through those short story ones. I don't think I've ever got—OLIVER: The moral sort of doom of it all, yes.THOMPSON: Well, the early ones, when they always had—you could see they'd hired a car for the day. [laughter] And I don't think I've ever got to the end of one of those.But I think—sorry, going back to your question, I think they probably did make a massive difference. You know, they're really, really popular. And whether she would have—what you think her—she might be read as much as somebody like Sayers if it weren't for all those adaptations. But then the fact of all those adaptations tells its own story in a way, because that wouldn't happen to one of the others, as you rightly said.Resurgence and PopularityOLIVER: No, they don't have that quality. And also, she was bigger than them. That's why they picked her, because she was bigger than them anyway.THOMPSON: And simpler. Because when I used to read them at university between the pages of Beowulf or whatever, like porn, [laughter] it was a bit mal vu. You read her for entertainment. But you certainly—I don't think—she's always been admired by a certain kind of French intellectual, hasn't she, for that subtextual quality that she has, that sort of fathomless quality that she has.But when I researched that biography, which I started in 2003, I can remember going on the radio. And names will not be named, but I was like a figure of fun with a couple of other detective writers, quite well known, who just sort of openly mocked me for taking her seriously and more or less said, “Oh yeah, we love her, but she's terrible” kind of thing. “Why are you taking her seriously?” I mean, it was regarded as a bit of a joke to take her seriously.I'm not saying I changed the game or anything like that, but I think there must have been a movement around that time in the early twenty-naughties—whatever the damn thing, decade's called—to start seeing that she is an interplay of text and subtext, facade and undercurrents, and these powerful foundations that underpin her books. Murder on the Orient Express is, you know, “Does human justice have the right to exert itself when legal justice has let it down?”There are these very strong—I think this is part of why she's survived the way she has. We intuit powerful truths underneath the Christie construct, if you like. I always say she's not real, she's true. I think she's incredibly wise about human nature, possibly more than any of them.You take a book like Evil Under the Sun, and there's a femme fatale who's murdered. “Oh, the femme fatale. No man can resist her.” Turns out she can't resist men. She's prey; she's not a predator. And of course, women who are so dependent on their looks and so on, that is what they are. They are prey. They're not predators. They're very, very vulnerable. Just a really small thing like that. And I just think, oh, you're very—there's so much easy wisdom in there somehow.And she deploys it perhaps differently—I mean, Ruth Rendell is wise, but it's very, “I am wise and you're going to pay attention to me.” You know what I mean? It's all very, “I'm very dark and very wise and very,” you know. I love her, but everything's so easy with Agatha. It's so, to coin a phrase, two tier. You can read them and have fun with them. You can read them and there's so much stuff going on underneath, and yet she presents this smooth face. I don't think any of the others are quite that resolved, if you like.Self-AdaptationsOLIVER: Now, you wrote that her own stage adaptations of The Hollow and Five Little Pigs lack the subtlety of the original books, quote, “almost as if Agatha herself did not realize what made them such good books.” How much of her talent do you think was unconscious in that way?THOMPSON: Yes. That's such a good question. I do think that, about those plays, it could have been that she just thought, “That's not what my audiences are going to want from me. They're just going to want to be entertained by”—we know she can do the other thing because of her Mary Westmacott books, where everything is laid out. They're not distilled at all; they're quite the opposite.I think they must have been such a pleasure for her to write because she didn't have to constantly—they're unresolved; they ask questions that don't have to be answered. She could have done that with those plays, I'm sure, but I think she would've thought people aren't coming to see them for that. I think she had a very good opinion of herself, in the best possible way.OLIVER: Hmm.THOMPSON: Like I said to you earlier, she didn't take a lot of notice of anything anybody said to her. Because it is like writing this other little book, the one I've just done about 1926. She was very acclaimed right from the start. I didn't emphasize that enough in the biography. And she was really recognized as very special right from the start.And I think it's extraordinary to me how—it's so difficult for us today, isn't it? We're so at the mercy of “That won't sell, don't do that, blah, blah, blah.” She really did not just plow her own furrow, but create that furrow in a way that you can only compare with, like, Lennon and McCartney. Or whether the time was absolutely right that they let her run, they trusted her to do what she wanted, and because she had the gift of pleasing readers . . .You do really feel, although those books are very tight and taut, you do feel an instinctive ease in what she's doing, an instinctive sort of—there's a kind of liberated—which sounds perverse because they are so controlled, the books. But I always feel she's doing exactly what she wants to do because she knows what it is and she knows how to do it. Because I think, would she be amazed that you and I are having this conversation now? I don't know that she would be, really. What do you think?OLIVER: No, I agree with you. I think she had what Johnson said, the felicity of rating herself properly. I think she knew she was really good.THOMPSON: You might know he'd say it right.OLIVER: Yes. [laughs] But there's a—I think there must have been something about—I think it's in Poirot's Christmas, one of those, where someone gets killed in the night in their bedroom, and they go up. And one of the women says, “Who would've thought the old man had so much blood in him?”And the quotation just sort of occurs to—I think there's quite a lot of that in Christie, right? Things are coming up and it fits. And she's good enough to run on instinct at times.THOMPSON: That's right. That's it. Exactly. That's absolutely right. Like the way she quotes from the—yes, I love the bit when she quotes from the Book of Saul in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which is really quite a profound novel about whether—I mean, it's terribly timely—whether it's better to be run by a corrupt capitalist or to let in the radicals. And as I said in the biography, the corrupt capitalist wins on points. But then another element enters, which is what power does to people. And that's when she quotes from the Book of Saul.And it's just like you said, this—an instinctive that she—I do always feel her as an instinctive writer, even though—her notebooks are intriguing because obviously some plots she really has to work away at. And yet they feel felicitous. A coup like The ABC Murders, and she's really—that went through lots and lots of iterations. But what she'll often do is scribble down a line of dialogue, a line of “There they are.” It's the whole—it's not bullet points, which is a loathsome concept. It reminds me of a bee going from flower to flower and knowing exactly which—and she's got this gift of knowing what flowers we're going to need.I sometimes fear I overdo it. I don't want be like one of those people who's writing a PhD on, what was the thing I said on Substack, gynocracy in St. Mary Mead or whatever. It's not—I do think that's a bit overdone these days, the rummaging in the subtext, because she's an interplay. And that's why I write that chapter in the book called “English Murder,” which is about the facade, you know, “smile and smile and be a villain.” And there's nothing more interesting. There's nothing more interesting than murder among classes who are trying to cover things up.And she does that—that's at the heart of golden age murder, I suppose. And I just think she does that better than anybody because she's so all the things we've been talking about. She's so distilled, she's so simple, she's so smooth, she's so instinctive. And she's doing it the way she wanted to do it because of your wonderful Dr. Johnson quote. She knew not to take notice of other people, including her—Quick Opinions on ChristieOLIVER: Should we have—THOMPSON: Yes. Go on.OLIVER: Sorry, sorry. Should we have a quick-fire round?THOMPSON: Please.OLIVER: I will say the name first of a few of her books—THOMPSON: Oh, god.OLIVER: —and then a few other detective writers, and you will just give us your unfiltered opinion: good, bad, ugly, indifferent.THOMPSON: Okay. What fun.OLIVER: You can “nothing” them if you want to.THOMPSON: Okay. [laughter]OLIVER: Hallowe'en Party.THOMPSON: Underrated. Very interesting on sixties counterculture and the effects of societal breakdown, et cetera. What do you think?OLIVER: I think it's a real page turner. I remember reading that for the first time. I loved it. Yes. Nemesis.THOMPSON: I can't keep saying the same thing. Underrated. [laughter] Very interesting philosophy of love in that book, I think. I think it harks back to her first marriage. However badly it turns out, it's better to have experienced it. It's quite a mournful novel.OLIVER: The Mr. Quin—THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Oh, sorry.THOMPSON: No, no. Sorry. You carry on. Marvelous. So inventive, don't you think? Such a clever character.OLIVER: Why didn't she do more of him?THOMPSON: Yes, that would've been good. And she was always interested in the commedia dell'arte. She wrote poems about it as a girl. And the concept of Mr. Quin, yes, as this sort of evanescent figure who's also a moral force, isn't he really? Or—yes, I wish she'd done more. They're marvelous.OLIVER: Towards Zero.THOMPSON: Oh, top notch, don't you think?OLIVER: One of the best.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree. Frightening motive. Very Ruth Rendell.OLIVER: It's very distinct in her. I haven't read all of her novels, but it's very distinct.THOMPSON: But the plot is, again, typical of her because it redefines the word contingent. [laughs] I mean, Dorothy Sayers would be having palpitations. She's very bold and grand like that. “Oh, there's a loose end. Oh, who cares?” You know, I mean, it's so—it just drives along that book, doesn't it? Yes. But I agree with you, one of her best.OLIVER: Death on the Nile.THOMPSON: Quite moving, I think. I think it's one of those ones from the thirties that, again, is talking about love in a way that—I think it just strikes a personal note to me because she was very in love with her first husband, Archie Christie. And he did fall in love with another woman, and it did cause her extreme pain that some people said to me she never quite got over.And I feel that a little bit in that book. There's a shadow of something quite powerful in that book, I think. Again, very, very loose and lovely plot, but powerful. Would you agree? Very good on the place as well, I think, Egypt.OLIVER: I love it. I think the solution is great.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And it makes a really good film.THOMPSON: It's a great film, yes. Wonderful film.Other Mystery WritersOLIVER: Yes. Okay. A few other detective writers: Michael Innes.THOMPSON: You've got me. I haven't read him. Should I?OLIVER: Oh, I think you will like him. Yes. Try Hamlet, Revenge!THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Oh, I like it already.OLIVER: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, this is exciting. Gladys Mitchell.THOMPSON: Can't get into her.OLIVER: No.THOMPSON: What do you think? Should I try a bit harder?OLIVER: I read two. I thought they were good. I was not intrigued.THOMPSON: No, somebody told—OLIVER: The ones I read—Spotted Hemlock is a wonderful, like, wow, that's great.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Somebody said to me, I know she really—no, I didn't—I read it in a book that she really hadn't liked Agatha Christie, but you know, who knows? All that Detection Club rivalry, you can imagine. But okay, Spotted Hemlock—if I'm going to read one, try that, yes?OLIVER: Yes, that's a great book. Margery Allingham.THOMPSON: Kind of love her, but I never understand her plots. I always feel I'm in a bit of a fog, but she's quite a good writer. Do you think? Or what do you think?OLIVER: She's good at the fog. She's good at that sort of whirligig sense that there's a lot going on—THOMPSON: Yes, whirligig.OLIVER: —and you've got to get to the end before they do, kind of thing.THOMPSON: Also, she had a pub in her sitting room. Now, I like a woman who has a pub in their sitting room.OLIVER: [laughs] E. C. Bentley.THOMPSON: You've got me again, Henry.OLIVER: Oh, The Blotting Book mystery. You'll like this.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay.OLIVER: The other one is not so good, but you'll like that a lot.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Edmund Crispin.THOMPSON: Didn't get on with him.OLIVER: Why not?THOMPSON: Don't know. Don't know. It sounds like I don't read the men, doesn't it? Which is not the truth at all.OLIVER: I think that's fair enough, isn't it?THOMPSON: Well, I don't know. I don't think anyone's ever come up with a really good reason why women have shone so brightly in this genre. I don't know. Why didn't I—I read that one, the toyshop one [The Moving Toyshop] or whatever. I don't know. I just didn't get on with it.OLIVER: Too glib?THOMPSON: Possibly.OLIVER: Bit flippant, bit sort of funny-funny?THOMPSON: Possibly. I just couldn't quite get hold of it in some way. I don't know.OLIVER: I quite like Edmund Crispin, but I do think he's got a bit of a “he's a very clever boy” about him.THOMPSON: Maybe that's what it was. Maybe that.OLIVER: Something, yes. G. K. Chesterton.THOMPSON: I haven't read Father Brown. Oh, this is awful, isn't it? I'm starting to sound like a radical feminist by accident.OLIVER: [laughs] Maybe that's what you are, Laura. Maybe you just need to admit it. [laughs]THOMPSON: No, it does. It sounds really bad because I do really love almost all the women. I just, I don't know why I haven't read him.Christie and NostalgiaOLIVER: Was Agatha a nostalgia writer?THOMPSON: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think anyone who was a nostalgia writer would've written At Bertram's Hotel, which is an entire spin on the riff of nostalgia. Really clever. I think that's such a clever book. The way she traps us in her golden age, you know, this phantasmagoria of the re-created golden age. And then she says, “Ha, really fooled you.”I've written about this. I think she moved with the 20th century far more than is realized. I love those Cold War novels she writes about her dislike of ideologies. I love her postwar books about the fragmentation of the hierarchical society. I think she's—well, she's an incidental social historian, as are, I think, P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, but they're much more underlined about it. Again, I'm intrigued what you think. Do you think she is?OLIVER: I think there's definitely some quality, particularly to the Miss Marple stories—as you say, the social history sort of becomes a way of preserving something that's disappearing. One of them, written in the sixties—you can tell me which one—it opens with that description of all the new houses in the village and the mothers who give their children cereal for breakfast. And what sort of a thing is that to give a child? They should have bacon and eggs. Bacon and eggs is a real—you know, and she does have a real something heartfelt and real sense that this part of England is going, and this new thing is coming in.THOMPSON: That's true. That's absolutely true. That's The Mirror Crack'd. And it's—OLIVER: The Mirror, yes, yes.THOMPSON: Yes, and that whole thing of Mrs. Bantry's house has now been bought by a film star and blah, blah, blah. Yes, no, you are absolutely right. I didn't think hard enough before I answered your question.OLIVER: But no, what you said is also true. I can't sort of work out to what extent she regrets it, to what extent it's just useful material for her, you know?THOMPSON: Both. I mean, some of her late books, including Endless Night, I think, which is an incredibly modern book—that whole “me, me, me” culture of “I want, therefore I will have now,” which is written when she was quite an old lady. And then a book like Passenger to Frankfurt, which is—it's a bit sub–Brave New World, but it's very honest and pessimistic about a future—well, the one we are living in, really—full of fear and uncertainty and almost dystopian.She was a realist. You know, she is Miss Marple in a lot of ways. She was a realist in a way that I think a lot of us would find it difficult to be. And her American publishers were often—would sort of say, can she tone this down? Can she not have a young person who's completely evil? Readers want to know, is she going get any therapy? [laughter] And it's so true. There's quite a lot of that going on.She's very clear-eyed. So if she—I'm a bit nostalgic for Blur, do you know what I mean? I mean, you can't help it, in a way, like that brilliant example you give at the start of The Mirror Crack'd. But I would say her image is quite at odds with the reality of her in that way. But the image—OLIVER: And the adaptations don't help with that.THOMPSON: No. No. But at the same time, that Christie image, you know, the gentlewoman, the tea or the eternal bridge party, blah, blah, blah, that has a huge power of its own. So just being too iconoclastic about her, I think, is also a lie. Because I think, again, it's that interplay. She used the image, and the image—I hate the word cozy. I loathe the word cozy, but there's no denying that any book of that kind does have that quality. So I suppose even that's nostalgic in a way.Christie's PoshnessOLIVER: In a way, yes. How posh was she?THOMPSON: Good question. I've been thinking about that a lot. Quite, I would say. Quite grand, with that confidence. Her father really was—as I said, he was a young blade in New York dancing with Jennie Jerome and blah, blah, blah. And then it so happened that he ended up in Torquay, which of course then was very posh. And the fact that when she disappears, she disappears to Harrogate, [laughs] which is like the Torquay of the north.I remember her grandson saying to me, “She dealt with her literary agent. To her, he was staff.” You know, that kind of thing. Her sister, there is a—well, her sister ended up very grand indeed with a huge house up in Cheshire.I think she just had that internal confidence, really. She wasn't—and that there wasn't much money. I mean, there was very little money when she was growing up, as of course you know, but that didn't matter. I mean, her voice is insane. Her voice is, [affecting a posh voice] “Oh, it's lucky it just happens.” [laughter] But yes, there's a part of her that is real late Victorian upper middle class that, again, underpins her books.It's amazing really how broad-minded and cosmopolitan she was. But possibly, I mean, possibly that does—she was—you know, when she disappeared, she was described in foreign newspapers as an Anglo-American, the embodiment of Englishness, and that's how she was described. And then of course she was genuinely cosmopolitan in her love of travel and her love of other cultures and all that obvious stuff. Yes.Inspirations for Miss MarpleOLIVER: How much of her grandmothers is in Miss Marple?THOMPSON: Quite a lot, I would say, particularly the—OLIVER: Drawn from life?THOMPSON: Well, in an essential way not, because Miss Marple has no real experience of life in that way. We're occasionally told about some chap who came calling who wasn't suitable or whatever, but she's almost defined by nonexperience of life in a sense, but observation of life. She's an observer. She's not an outsider in the way that Poirot is. She has a place within the social hierarchy and whatever, and that village has a reality to it. And the way it changes has a reality to it. But she is defined by being an observer, I would say.But Margaret Miller, who was the rich grandmother, who is the one who had the big house at Ealing and was—you know, she's the one who would go to the Army and Navy stores and all that stuff that's in At Bertram's Hotel. She was—there's a lot of her in Miss—I think, as I say in the book, she grew up with the sound of female wisdom in her ears. You know, her grandmother was the sort of—if she'd seen her up in Harrogate, she would've known exactly what was going on. You know, one of those kind of women who could spot an affair at a hundred paces, just a wise sort of woman, worldly, worldly woman.And Miss Marple is worldly in her thinking, but not in her experience, particularly in a book like A Caribbean Mystery, which I think is—she's a real sophisticate, Agatha. I mean, I'm reading The Hollow again at the moment. And it's really astounding to me how there's a love affair at the center of it with a young woman who's kind of a self-portrait and this married man. And not only, there's not—it's not only nonjudgmental; there's literally no concept of judgment being in the vicinity. It's really, really sophisticated, grown-up stuff, I think. And again, I think that's maybe not recognized about her that much.Nursery RhymesOLIVER: What are the importance of nursery rhymes to her?THOMPSON: Yes, that's interesting. They're part of that distilled quality she had, I suppose, that really simple ability to catch hold of something that is simple and familiar in itself and then subvert it. There's books where she—I don't think she needs it in Five Little Pigs. I think the book is almost too good for that.But is it not to do with that—like her titles, which are really, really simple with a faint frisson of the sinister about them. Is it not that ability she has to catch, to take something really, really simple and subvert it for her own ends? What do you think? Do you think that's right? Or do you think it's something more than that?OLIVER: No, I think the simplicity is the point, and I think it probably gives her a way of talking, of showing how fundamental the wickedness is. And as you say, the children can be evil, and it's part of the darkness in a way, but it gives the appearance of innocence and, oh, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe? You know, children do this. And so it leads you through and makes it worse somehow. [laughs]THOMPSON: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. But I know I've—how many times have I said the word simple? But I really do feel that's the heart of her. And I also feel it's the heart of why she was misunderstood when I was growing up reading her because it was mistaken for simplistic.Wartime ProductivityOLIVER: Why was she so productive during the war? I mean, there were four books one year.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And as you say, they're some of the best. I mean, what is it about the war that gets her so busy?THOMPSON: Well, she was on her own, which she had never been, really. Well, obviously she divorced her first husband in 1928. So there's a couple of very bleak, dead years before she met her second husband and married him in 1930. But she wasn't completely on her own because she had her friend Charlotte Fisher, who was a sort of secretary-companion, but much more than that—really, really good friend.But in the war, Max Mallowan was abroad. Her daughter—she had one child—her daughter was married and living in Wales. And she was living in the Isokon building in North London, which I love because that's like, “You think I'm chintzy and old fashioned. And here I am socializing with the sort of left-wing intelligentsia at the Isokon building.” And there's something about being in that adorable little flat—they're so fabulous, those flats—and being alone but not feeling abandoned, as she had after her first marriage.And I suppose also, you know, war is, you either cower in despair or you think, “Right, well, better get on with it.” War is stimulating in that way. I think it was to quite a few writers, maybe, or quite a few creatives. The shadow of death. But there was something about that solitude but not abandonment, plus the stimulation of not knowing whether it was your last day on earth that did—it did. I mean, it's absolutely insane how productive she is.And then she wrote—she had a week off. She was also working as a dispenser at a London hospital, and she had a week off. And she wrote a Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring, which is one of her best Westmacotts, I think. I mean, she's got a week off and she writes a book. I mean, Jesus, there's a challenge to us, Henry. [laughter]The Mary Westmacott NovelsOLIVER: What are those Mary Westmacotts like? Because I've never read them, but you seem very—THOMPSON: Oh, have you not?OLIVER: You're very up on them. You like them?THOMPSON: I am. I really am. Well, for a biographer, they were a treasure trove because they're very revealing. Unfinished Portrait is, I think, as close as you are ever going to come to a true autobiography, as opposed to the actual autobiography, which is charmingly disingenuous.OLIVER: And also dull. No? I mean, it's just so dull.THOMPSON: Do you think? It is a bit.OLIVER: I couldn't read it. I couldn't read it. No, it was so long and so leaden. I felt like she didn't really want to tell me the story of her life. Just couldn't.THOMPSON: Well, I think that's probably right. It was very heavily edited after her death. And her daughter was very, very protective of her. So, Max Mallowan as well. So maybe there was a much better book in there somewhere. Who knows?OLIVER: So we should read Mary Westmacott if we want the unfiltered Agatha?THOMPSON: I would say Unfinished Portrait. It really fascinates me because the worst time you've ever gone through in your life—so in 1926, she lost her mother and her husband in the space of four months. And I think an awful lot of people, even writers, would think, “I'm going to put that behind me and get on.” But she had to reopen the wound. She had to go through it all again eight years later. I find that really, in itself, incredibly revealing about her.Poirot vs. MarpleOLIVER: Why is there so much more Poirot than Marple?THOMPSON: Yes, I've wondered that because there is this little thing that she hated him, which I don't really think she did. It's just something people say, isn't it?OLIVER: Well, it's a common thing about artists. They're supposed to hate their most successful work, but—THOMPSON: Yes. Yes. All I could come up with was that he was easier to put in different places. He could conceivably be on the Nile or in Mesopotamia or—I mean, it would be a—she does manage to get Miss Marple to the West Indies, but it's certainly—OLIVER: There are only so many holidays your nephew can send you on.THOMPSON: He was really successful, that nephew, wasn't he? Who do you think he was like? Sort of Ian McEwan or—OLIVER: [laughs] I know. It was sort of crazy, isn't it?THOMPSON: And very kind to her.OLIVER: It might be to her credit that she doesn't do a Midsomer Murders thing and just sort of wave away and say, “Oh, we can just have as many of these murders as we want.” She says, “No, we can only fit—” Do you think maybe that's it?THOMPSON: I think there might be a bit of that. I mean, her notebooks sort of—some of the books were originally Marples, like Cat Among the Pigeons and Death on the Nile, in fact. And then they became Poirots. I just wonder whether he's a bit more malleable because she is a more rooted, fixed entity.And he is—I don't mean to denigrate David Suchet because he's a fantastic actor, but he does root him more than I think the written version. I think he is a sketch on the page. And one of her great skills, I think, is how she can sketch, and they've got that quality of aliveness on the page, which you just can't analyze, really. I don't—well, I can't. And that's how I see Poirot. So he was more movable in that sense.And she's incredibly good at certain—like Sleeping Murder, there's no way you could have him in that. And Miss Marple is—her qualities are so perfect for a book like that, which has suddenly reminded me of how she got me into John Webster. I never read John Webster until—OLIVER: [laughs] That's great.THOMPSON: The way she uses The Duchess of Malfi is so clever. Do you think that's right about Poirot? Do you think there's something more . . .Reader Preferences and SalesOLIVER: I can see that. I wondered if there was some reader's prejudice involved.THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Poirot is the sort of exotic—Sherlock Holmes, one thing that makes him popular is that he's a bit wacky, you know. And Poirot—he's always talking about, “You English are so xenophobic. Excuse me, I am Belgian.” And with the eggs and all the little—whereas Miss Marple's just the kind of old lady that we all wish there were more of. And how much of that will readers take? I don't know.THOMPSON: Yes. Although, as I say, she, she did—I mean, I think her publishers did like her to do Poirot, but I don't know that she would've been influenced by that necessarily. I mean, maybe she was—maybe I'm overdoing her—OLIVER: Well, she had these terrible money problems. Didn't she have to be a little bit focused on the dollar?THOMPSON: She did. She did, but she didn't—well, I mean, the money problems are insane because they were absolutely no fault of her own. They were to do with test cases, and it was just this sort of accumulation of horror that put her in tax problems during the war. And she really never could dig her way out of them and was advised to go bankrupt twice, which is unbelievable, just as a way of clearing it. I mean, it's terrible.But I don't know that she—I think her attitude was a bit more, “Well, why should I even bother if they're just going to take it away from me?” In 1948 she didn't write anything at all because I think she thought, “What's the point?” But then, that wasn't her way. But I don't know that she thought of writing as a way of digging out of it necessarily. But I could be—OLIVER: The Marples, did they make less money? Were they, did they sell less?THOMPSON: Not really. I think they all sold. Even poor old Passenger to Frankfurt sold hugely, absolutely hugely. I think people—I mean, my parents would—it was like people just wanted them, the Christie for Christmas.Rereading ChristieOLIVER: How many times have you read these books? Do you ever get bored?THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: Really?THOMPSON: Well, I have them on rotation, and I don't—as you know, I do interleave them with our beloved Elizabeth Bowen, who's my passion at the moment, and other people. But they are consolatory, I suppose. They are—there's bits of—there is this kind of—there's bits of them that I just know completely off by heart, like the gramophone record in And Then There Were None and all that.But there's something—and maybe I should have said this earlier, when I say—I've said it on Substack—that they're fairy tales for adults. There's something about that. There's an almost physical sensation of pleasure, really, when the resolution comes. It is a bit like act five of Shakespeare. I'm not going to say she's quite on that level. Not even I am going to say that.But there is—and it is like being a child again and reading the end toward the happy-ever-after, even though her happy-ever-afters are sometimes compromised. And there is something almost primal in that pleasure. And it almost sounds borderline mad, me saying it like that, but I do think there's something in it because the resolution is so—because it's character based, and at her best, she's character and plot as one, as in Five Little Pigs or The Hollow or Murder on the Orient Express or blah, blah, blah.Her resolutions do tell you something about human nature. You do think, “Oh, yes, that is what that would be. Yes, it would be all about money. Yes. Yes, doctors are untrustworthy,” or something on a more profound level than that. There's something that is a satisfaction, both childlike and I'm experiencing it as an adult. In my defense, P. G. Wodehouse said you can never read them too many times. [laughs] It doesn't matter if you know who did it. There's so much pleasure in them.Thompson's CareerOLIVER: Now, I want to ask a little bit about your career.THOMPSON: Mm-hmm.OLIVER: You were at a sort of stage school, then you studied at Merton, and then you worked at The Times.THOMPSON: Yes. Very briefly. Yes.OLIVER: How does one therefore go from all of this to being the biographer?THOMPSON: Well, I did always think I would have a career in—I wanted to direct plays. I directed Hamlet after university, which is probably the thing I'm still proudest of. But what it was, was that I wrote a couple of books. I won an award when I was quite young.And then I had an agent who—I said to him, “I want to write a biography of Nancy Mitford.” And he wasn't very keen on the idea, but I must have written an okay proposal. Again, because I thought Nancy Mitford was a little bit undervalued, that she's a lot more than just a posh girl. And at the time her reputation was quite low. And so somebody bought into that idea, and it sort of went from there, really.But it's a bit—I sometimes look back at the books I've written, including a memoir of my publican grandmother, and I think, gosh, this is all quite scatter-gun, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you should just write the books you really want to write. But it was a passion for Nancy Mitford that sort of started that particular ball rolling.And then I had the idea of—oh, no. I was down in Devon with a boyfriend, and he said, “You never stop talking about Agatha Christie. Why don't you try and write her biography?” And that was just a luck of timing because her daughter was still alive. So I met her, and she liked me because I knew the Mary Westmacotts so well, and that sort of happened. I mean, quite often these things are very fortuitous, don't you think? Did you not find that with your book?OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, I did. I did. I think some writers, as you say—I don't think of it as scatter-gun. I think of it, it's sort of an emergent thing, and you happen to have these different interests, and you just follow your nose, and that's fine.THOMPSON: Yes, exactly.OLIVER: Tell us about this production of Hamlet.THOMPSON: Oh. Do you know, I think it was not bad. I had a very good Hamlet. I think if you've—well, you're in trouble without—who is now quite a successful actor. And we were all really young, but he was—I saw him in something and said, “Do you want to play Hamlet for me?” And he said, “Okay then.” And it was a room above a pub in Chelsea, and it was very spare and very quick.And it was about—I can't bear when people overanalyze the character of Hamlet, and why does he delay? He delays because Shakespeare wants him to, so that he can write all those incredible speeches. That's a bit simplified, but it was—he was so, he so understood the translucent power of those soliloquies, this actor. So it just sort of worked because we didn't do too much to it. And it was, yes, it was good. I think it was good. But then I did Macbeth, and that was much less good.Secretly Reading ChristieOLIVER: And you've said here, and I think you said it in your book, that when you were at Merton, you were reading Agatha Christie between the covers of what you were supposed to be reading.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, I was.OLIVER: That can't be—is that a slight exaggeration, or did you really not get on with the syllabus?THOMPSON: Well, hang on. I was a bit stuck in the first term. Can you imagine coming from a performing arts school—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —and then being told, “Read that bloody, you know.OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, it's intense.THOMPSON: All I knew was French. How I got in is a minor mystery, but there it was. I've tried to do it honor ever since by writing as best books I possibly can. But I was okay once I got over that bit. Once I got into my beloved Tennyson and all the people we've been talking about, Hardy and blah, blah, blah. Larkin, about whom the best thing I've ever read—the best thing I've ever read about Larkin is your Substack about him, without a shadow of a doubt.OLIVER: Oh, thank you.THOMPSON: Just wonderful. So I sort of winged it a bit, but I had a very nice don. And the autodidact side of me, which is very like Agatha Christie, who barely went to school, and Nancy Mitford—I think it can be a good thing in a way, because you have such a respect for learning and truth. I always try to be truthful in my biographies, which as we know, not everybody is. [laughter]And I think you carry on wanting to learn and carry on wanting to fill all the gaps because I only had half an education, because in the morning you would do ballet and drama and all that kind of thing. So it is a bit odd, but in some ways I think it's been a good thing.OLIVER: Now, the new book is about the 1926 disappearance. When can we expect it to be published?THOMPSON: It's only a short book—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —because obviously I covered it a lot in the biography, and it doesn't—but I have found out a couple of new things. And that will be out in August here and in November in America. And I have come up with a slightly different slant on it, but mainly—and I treat it a little bit like a cold case. And it was—I had to write—I wrote it in five weeks, but it was incredibly good fun. Oh, and I reenacted her journey, which was very interesting, to Harrogate.But mainly it's such a pleasure because I, you know, on Substack, and I think, “Oh, you can't write about Agatha Christie again.” There always seems to be quite a lot to say. I'm intrigued by how you, who I think of as a true intellectual, how you have clear regard for her.Henry on Agatha ChristieOLIVER: I started reading her when I was about 12, and I just thought she was great, and I went through most of them. But I read them at intervals. So I was reading her into my twenties, thirties. And before this interview I tried to—I thought, “Laura's always saying Five Little Pigs is the best one. I'm going to read it.” And I just sort of found that I've lost the taste, in a way.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Which I was quite, I don't know, just maybe—I feel like this is my failing. Maybe I should take a week off and sit by the pool and read it properly. But I've always thought she's really, really great, and very few people can do that many very compelling stories without you sort of thinking, “Oh, I've read this one. I know. Yes. It's the same as the other one, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it was the”—as you say, it's not Cluedo. Even Dorothy L. Sayers, I don't think I could read much more by her, frankly. Great, she's great, but it's enough. [laughs]THOMPSON: Well, I quite like her. The whole—most girls who went to Oxford are quite keen on Gaudy Night, and the character of Harriet Vane is quite satisfying, I think.OLIVER: Indeed, indeed. And Strong Poison is great. And there—but I just mean if she'd written as many books as Agatha, you can't imagine it would've sustained the level of quality.THOMPSON: No, no. There is that lightness in Agatha and that terrible cliché of, “I wrote a long book because it was too—I didn't have enough time to write a short book,” and all that kind of thing. The brevity amazes me. When I said at the start, most writers would take twice as many pages to get all that in.She has style—I don't know if you can call it a style, but there is something blindingly effective about it that nobody can imitate. And it does—there's something so fathomless about her, and that's what continues to compel me. But I think it's very lovely of you to do this if you are no longer an admirer because you've let me sort of—OLIVER: Well, it's not that I'm not an admirer. It's just that I don't—I had this with P. G. Wodehouse. I read quite a lot of it, and now, I don't know, somehow I've reached a point where it's—I sort of get it, but it's just not that funny anymore. I don't know, just need some time away.THOMPSON: Well, maybe. Maybe, but you know, I'm a bit—she's part of my life now. It's like if somebody said, “You can't read her anymore,” it would be like, “You can't listen to the Rolling Stones anymore.” I mean, it'd be like a kind of death. She's part of my life the same way they're part of my life. She's now inseparable from just the way I go on, as is Shakespeare. And if I had to lose one of them, trust me, it would be her, you'll be reassured to know. [laughter]OLIVER: Very good. Laura, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much.THOMPSON: Oh, I've really enjoyed it. I really have. And I was really looking forward to it, and it's been even nicer than I thought it would be. So thank you.OLIVER: Oh, it's been delightful.THOMPSON: Thank you so much, Henry.OLIVER: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

After last week's “Hercule Poirot” TV pilot, we turn back to the great David Suchet for a look at “Murder on the Links.” Since we published “The Complete, Annotated Murder on the Links,” we've got a lot to say about this episode from “Agatha Christie's Poirot.” Teresa Peschel, author of "Agatha Christie, She Watched" and the "International Agatha Christie, She Watched," hosts our livestream. Joining Teresa is her husband, technical adviser, and straight man, Bill Peschel. Together, they are Peschel Press, publisher of intriguing, intelligent, and idiosyncratic books (www.peschelpress.com).

Năm mươi năm sau ngày Agatha Christie qua đời (1890-1976), các tác phẩm của bà vẫn giữ nguyên sức cuốn hút đối với nhiều thế hệ độc giả. Với hơn hai tỷ rưỡi quyển sách bán chạy từ gần một thế kỷ qua, nữ hoàng tiểu thuyết trinh thám Agatha Christie chẳng những là một trong những tác giả được đọc nhiều nhất, mà còn gợi hứng cho các nhà làm phim thực hiện các bản phóng tác điện ảnh cũng như truyền hình. Theo công ty nghiên cứu thị trường GfK, có trụ sở tại Đức, khi qua đời nhà văn người Anh Agatha Christie đã để lại một di sản nghệ thuật đồ sộ với 66 quyển tiểu thuyết, khoảng 150 truyện ngắn, 20 vở kịch và hai cuốn hồi ký. Thế nhưng, có khá nhiều người hâm mộ lần đầu tiên khám phá thế giới của nữ hoàng tiểu thuyết trinh thám không phải là qua văn chương mà chủ yếu là qua phim ảnh. Kể từ đầu những năm 1930, tác phẩm của Agatha Christie đã bắt đầu được chuyển thể lên màn ảnh lớn với nhân vật thám tử tư Hercule Poirot, đó là trường hợp của bộ phim Black Coffee (Cà phê đen 1931) dựa theo vở kịch cùng tên. Từ đó đến nay, đã có khoảng 50 tác phẩm của bà được phóng tác thành phim truyện điện ảnh, trong khi các phiên bản nhiều  tập chiếu trên đài truyền hình được phát đi phát lại, rất nhiều lần.  Chuyên gia Jérémy Picard là tác giả quyển sách « Agatha Christie : Des romans à l'écran » (Agatha Christie : Từ tiểu thuyết đến màn ảnh) do nhà xuất bản Hugo Doc phát hành. Trả lời phỏng vấn RFI Pháp ngữ, anh cho biết có một điều nghịch lý là mặc dù các bộ phim thành công rực rỡ, nhưng sinh thời Agatha Christie lại không thích các phiên bản điện ảnh phóng tác từ các quyển tiểu thuyết của mình. « Theo tôi, bà Agatha Christie không có nhiều thiện cảm với các bản phóng tác điện ảnh vì lý do tuổi tác. Bà thuộc thế hệ lớn lên trước thời đại khai sinh nền điện ảnh. Những bản chuyển thể đầu tiên từ tiểu thuyết thành phim truyện, thực sự đã gây thất vọng : người xem có cảm tưởng phim trinh thám được quay để "kiếm tiền" chứ không hề có tham vọng nghệ thuật nào. Riêng đối với chính tác giả, các bản phóng tác điện ảnh đầu tiên ít khi nào trung thành với tác phẩm gốc : cốt truyện, nhân vật và thậm chí kết cục bị thay đổi đáng kể, theo ý muốn của nhà sản xuất. Vào năm 1933, bộ phim Pháp "Chiếc hộp sơn mài" (Le coffret de laque) với nữ diễn viên Danielle Darrieux trong vai chính đã được cho ra mắt khán giả mà không hề ghi rằng phim này dựa trên tác phẩm (Cà phê đen/Black Cofee) của nhà văn Agatha Christie. Điều đó khiến bà ghét những người chuyên cắt xén, sửa đổi hay viết lại kịch bản. » Nếu không có nhiều cảm tình với các nhà sản xuất phim ảnh, vậy thì tại sao sinh thời, nữ hoàng tiểu thuyết trinh thám Agatha Christie thường hay bán lại quyền khai thác các quyển sách ăn khách của mình. Tác giả Jérémy Picard giải thích tiếp : « Sinh thời, bà Agatha Christie có đầu óc thực dụng của một nhà kinh doanh. Mặc dù không mặn mà gì với ngành công nghiệp điện ảnh, nhưng bà vẫn tiếp tục nhượng lại bản quyền vì lý do tài chính. Phim dựa theo tiểu thuyết của bà thường có nguồn kinh phí cao, trong trường hợp bộ phim thu hút được nhiều khán giả, bà lại càng dễ mặc cả bản quyền của mình khi có dự án làm phim mới. Xa hơn nữa, thành công của bộ phim phóng tác cũng có lợi cho tác phẩm gốc. Thành công của các phiên bản điện ảnh giúp cho các nhân vật trở nên gần gũi hơn với những khán giả không đọc sách và từ đó họ có thể tìm đọc các quyển tiểu thuyết của nhà văn người Anh. Vào những năm 1960, khi lần đầu tiên bộ tiểu thuyết với nhân vật Miss Marple được chuyển thể thành phim truyền hình nhiều tập, với nữ diễn viên Margaret Rutherford trong vai chính, bà Agatha Christie đã không ngại lên tiếng chê bai, từ khâu soạn kịch bản cho đến thành phần diễn viên mà bà cho là quá tệ. Tuy nhiên, sau một thời gian, khi Miss Marple thành công trên màn ảnh nhỏ, chinh phục được nhiều khán giả truyền hình, thì lúc ấy nhà văn người Anh mới đổi ý. Điều đó cho thấy quan hệ hơi mâu thuẫn giữa Agatha Christie với ngành sản xuất phim ảnh, cho dù không thích nhau nhưng buộc phải "sống chung". » Từ cuối những năm 1950 trở đi, các bản phóng tác điện ảnh (nhất là « Witness for the Prosecution » vào năm 1958) trở thành những bộ phim ăn khách thu hút được nhiều khán giả nhờ dàn ngôi sao màn bạc hàng đầu. Cách tuyển chọn nhiều ngôi sao hạng A vào các vai diễn, chính cũng như phụ, thực sự trở thành một hệ thống từ năm 1974 trở đi. Tác giả Jérémy Picard cho biết vì sao có nhiều diễn viên danh tiếng nhận lời đóng phim phóng tác từ truyện Agatha Christie : « Bởi vì đó là dấu ấn tạo ra nét độc đáo của các bộ phim dựa theo tiểu thuyết của Agatha Christie. Hệ thống tuyển lựa « dàn sao » nổi tiếng bắt đầu với bộ phim « Án mạng trên chuyến tàu tốc hành phương Đông » (Murder on the Orient Express) của Sidney Lumet. Vào thời bấy giờ đạo diễn Mỹ nhận lời quay phim với điều kiện mỗi nhân vật (dù là chính hay phụ) phải do một ngôi sao thủ vai. Trước hết, một dàn diễn viên càng hùng hậu càng dễ lôi kéo khán giả vào rạp. Thứ hai, theo quan niệm của nhà đạo diễn Sidney Lumet, do trong cuộc điều tra vụ án, bất cứ ai cũng có thể bị tình nghi, cho nên việc nhiều ngôi sao xuất hiện cùng lúc giúp duy trì nét bí ẩn, khiến cho khán giả càng không dễ đoán ra ai thực sự là thủ phạm. Chiến lược của Sidney Lumet đã nhắm trúng mục tiêu, vì ngôi sao Ingrid Bergman đã đoạt giải Oscar diễn xuất nhờ bộ phim này dù cô xuất hiện trên màn ảnh lớn chỉ trong vòng 8 phút. Thành công này thuyết phục nhiều diễn viên sau đó tham gia các dự án làm phim khác. Hệ thống dàn sao được lặp lại vào năm 1978 với bộ phim "Án mạng trên sông Nile" (Death on the Nile) và gần đây hơn nữa là ba tập phim Agatha Christie do đạo diễn người Anh Kenneth Branagh thực hiện. Một giai thoại thú vị là nam diễn viên Johnny Depp được trả 10 triệu đô la để đóng vai nạn nhân bị sát hại trong bộ phim "Murder on the Orient Express" (Án mạng trên chuyến tàu tốc hành phương Đông) vào năm 2017. Johnny Depp chỉ xuất hiện trên màn ảnh trong 20 phút. Hãy thử tính xem : nam diễn viên người Mỹ nhận được khoảng nửa triệu đô la cho mỗi phút đóng phim !!! » Trong lãnh vực truyền hình, tiểu thuyết Agatha Christie ăn khách trở lại, khi các nhân vật trong truyện được đưa lên màn ảnh nhỏ. Đầu tiên hết là nhân vật Miss Marple, có đến ba nữ diễn viên khác nhau qua nhiều thời kỳ, đã đóng vai bà cụ thích ngồi đan áo, nhưng nhờ óc quan sát tinh tế, mà tháo gỡ được nhiều nút thắt bí ẩn, để rồi phá án một cách ly kỳ. Đổi lại, theo Jérémy Picard, trong vai thám tử người Bỉ Hercule Poirot, hầu như mọi người đều đồng ý rằng không ai đóng vai này, hay bằng nam diễn viên David Suchet.  « Phải công nhận rằng trong hơn 20 năm, David Suchet đã có một lối diễn đạt xuất sắc tài tình, khi ông hóa thân thành thám tử Hercule Poirot. Điều thú vị là khi được mời đóng vai này, ông hơi đắn đo do dự vì lúc ấy ông không biết gì nhiều về thế giới của Agatha Christie. Để chuẩn bị vai này, David Suchet đã đọc toàn bộ tác phẩm, ghi chú từng chi tiết nhỏ nhặt nhất, dùng để mô tả nhân vật trong truyện : từ thói quen, dáng đi, cách ăn nói để có thể tạo ra một nhân vật gần giống nhân vật tiểu thuyết, một người có kiến thức uyên bác, có óc quan sát bén nhạy nhưng đồng thời cũng lắm tật. Bên cạnh đó, thành công của loạt phim truyền hình này phần lớn cũng là vì kịch bản phóng tác trung thành với bản gốc của tiểu thuyết. » Nửa thế kỷ sau ngày tác giả qua đời, sức cuốn hút của Agatha Christie một lần nữa bùng phát trở lại với sự xuất hiện trên mạng Netflix của một bản chuyển thể mới với tựa đề « The Seven Dials » (Kỳ án bảy mặt đồng hồ). Phim này dài ba tập và hứa hẹn nhiều tình tiết gay cấn ly kỳ xung quanh cái chết của nhiều thanh niên có liên quan đến một hội kín bí ẩn. Sự kiện có thêm một tác phẩm ít nổi tiếng (so với Hercule Poirot và Miss Marple) được dựng thành phim nhiều tập, cho thấy sức sống bền bỉ của các bộ tiểu thuyết, có mang chữ ký của nữ hoàng trinh thám Agatha Christie.

Năm mươi năm sau ngày Agatha Christie qua đời (1890-1976), các tác phẩm của bà vẫn giữ nguyên sức cuốn hút đối với nhiều thế hệ độc giả. Với hơn hai tỷ rưỡi quyển sách bán chạy từ gần một thế kỷ qua, nữ hoàng tiểu thuyết trinh thám Agatha Christie chẳng những là một trong những tác giả được đọc nhiều nhất, mà còn gợi hứng cho các nhà làm phim thực hiện các bản phóng tác điện ảnh cũng như truyền hình. Theo công ty nghiên cứu thị trường GfK, có trụ sở tại Đức, khi qua đời nhà văn người Anh Agatha Christie đã để lại một di sản nghệ thuật đồ sộ với 66 quyển tiểu thuyết, khoảng 150 truyện ngắn, 20 vở kịch và hai cuốn hồi ký. Thế nhưng, có khá nhiều người hâm mộ lần đầu tiên khám phá thế giới của nữ hoàng tiểu thuyết trinh thám không phải là qua văn chương mà chủ yếu là qua phim ảnh. Kể từ đầu những năm 1930, tác phẩm của Agatha Christie đã bắt đầu được chuyển thể lên màn ảnh lớn với nhân vật thám tử tư Hercule Poirot, đó là trường hợp của bộ phim Black Coffee (Cà phê đen 1931) dựa theo vở kịch cùng tên. Từ đó đến nay, đã có khoảng 50 tác phẩm của bà được phóng tác thành phim truyện điện ảnh, trong khi các phiên bản nhiều  tập chiếu trên đài truyền hình được phát đi phát lại, rất nhiều lần.  Chuyên gia Jérémy Picard là tác giả quyển sách « Agatha Christie : Des romans à l'écran » (Agatha Christie : Từ tiểu thuyết đến màn ảnh) do nhà xuất bản Hugo Doc phát hành. Trả lời phỏng vấn RFI Pháp ngữ, anh cho biết có một điều nghịch lý là mặc dù các bộ phim thành công rực rỡ, nhưng sinh thời Agatha Christie lại không thích các phiên bản điện ảnh phóng tác từ các quyển tiểu thuyết của mình. « Theo tôi, bà Agatha Christie không có nhiều thiện cảm với các bản phóng tác điện ảnh vì lý do tuổi tác. Bà thuộc thế hệ lớn lên trước thời đại khai sinh nền điện ảnh. Những bản chuyển thể đầu tiên từ tiểu thuyết thành phim truyện, thực sự đã gây thất vọng : người xem có cảm tưởng phim trinh thám được quay để "kiếm tiền" chứ không hề có tham vọng nghệ thuật nào. Riêng đối với chính tác giả, các bản phóng tác điện ảnh đầu tiên ít khi nào trung thành với tác phẩm gốc : cốt truyện, nhân vật và thậm chí kết cục bị thay đổi đáng kể, theo ý muốn của nhà sản xuất. Vào năm 1933, bộ phim Pháp "Chiếc hộp sơn mài" (Le coffret de laque) với nữ diễn viên Danielle Darrieux trong vai chính đã được cho ra mắt khán giả mà không hề ghi rằng phim này dựa trên tác phẩm (Cà phê đen/Black Cofee) của nhà văn Agatha Christie. Điều đó khiến bà ghét những người chuyên cắt xén, sửa đổi hay viết lại kịch bản. » Nếu không có nhiều cảm tình với các nhà sản xuất phim ảnh, vậy thì tại sao sinh thời, nữ hoàng tiểu thuyết trinh thám Agatha Christie thường hay bán lại quyền khai thác các quyển sách ăn khách của mình. Tác giả Jérémy Picard giải thích tiếp : « Sinh thời, bà Agatha Christie có đầu óc thực dụng của một nhà kinh doanh. Mặc dù không mặn mà gì với ngành công nghiệp điện ảnh, nhưng bà vẫn tiếp tục nhượng lại bản quyền vì lý do tài chính. Phim dựa theo tiểu thuyết của bà thường có nguồn kinh phí cao, trong trường hợp bộ phim thu hút được nhiều khán giả, bà lại càng dễ mặc cả bản quyền của mình khi có dự án làm phim mới. Xa hơn nữa, thành công của bộ phim phóng tác cũng có lợi cho tác phẩm gốc. Thành công của các phiên bản điện ảnh giúp cho các nhân vật trở nên gần gũi hơn với những khán giả không đọc sách và từ đó họ có thể tìm đọc các quyển tiểu thuyết của nhà văn người Anh. Vào những năm 1960, khi lần đầu tiên bộ tiểu thuyết với nhân vật Miss Marple được chuyển thể thành phim truyền hình nhiều tập, với nữ diễn viên Margaret Rutherford trong vai chính, bà Agatha Christie đã không ngại lên tiếng chê bai, từ khâu soạn kịch bản cho đến thành phần diễn viên mà bà cho là quá tệ. Tuy nhiên, sau một thời gian, khi Miss Marple thành công trên màn ảnh nhỏ, chinh phục được nhiều khán giả truyền hình, thì lúc ấy nhà văn người Anh mới đổi ý. Điều đó cho thấy quan hệ hơi mâu thuẫn giữa Agatha Christie với ngành sản xuất phim ảnh, cho dù không thích nhau nhưng buộc phải "sống chung". » Từ cuối những năm 1950 trở đi, các bản phóng tác điện ảnh (nhất là « Witness for the Prosecution » vào năm 1958) trở thành những bộ phim ăn khách thu hút được nhiều khán giả nhờ dàn ngôi sao màn bạc hàng đầu. Cách tuyển chọn nhiều ngôi sao hạng A vào các vai diễn, chính cũng như phụ, thực sự trở thành một hệ thống từ năm 1974 trở đi. Tác giả Jérémy Picard cho biết vì sao có nhiều diễn viên danh tiếng nhận lời đóng phim phóng tác từ truyện Agatha Christie : « Bởi vì đó là dấu ấn tạo ra nét độc đáo của các bộ phim dựa theo tiểu thuyết của Agatha Christie. Hệ thống tuyển lựa « dàn sao » nổi tiếng bắt đầu với bộ phim « Án mạng trên chuyến tàu tốc hành phương Đông » (Murder on the Orient Express) của Sidney Lumet. Vào thời bấy giờ đạo diễn Mỹ nhận lời quay phim với điều kiện mỗi nhân vật (dù là chính hay phụ) phải do một ngôi sao thủ vai. Trước hết, một dàn diễn viên càng hùng hậu càng dễ lôi kéo khán giả vào rạp. Thứ hai, theo quan niệm của nhà đạo diễn Sidney Lumet, do trong cuộc điều tra vụ án, bất cứ ai cũng có thể bị tình nghi, cho nên việc nhiều ngôi sao xuất hiện cùng lúc giúp duy trì nét bí ẩn, khiến cho khán giả càng không dễ đoán ra ai thực sự là thủ phạm. Chiến lược của Sidney Lumet đã nhắm trúng mục tiêu, vì ngôi sao Ingrid Bergman đã đoạt giải Oscar diễn xuất nhờ bộ phim này dù cô xuất hiện trên màn ảnh lớn chỉ trong vòng 8 phút. Thành công này thuyết phục nhiều diễn viên sau đó tham gia các dự án làm phim khác. Hệ thống dàn sao được lặp lại vào năm 1978 với bộ phim "Án mạng trên sông Nile" (Death on the Nile) và gần đây hơn nữa là ba tập phim Agatha Christie do đạo diễn người Anh Kenneth Branagh thực hiện. Một giai thoại thú vị là nam diễn viên Johnny Depp được trả 10 triệu đô la để đóng vai nạn nhân bị sát hại trong bộ phim "Murder on the Orient Express" (Án mạng trên chuyến tàu tốc hành phương Đông) vào năm 2017. Johnny Depp chỉ xuất hiện trên màn ảnh trong 20 phút. Hãy thử tính xem : nam diễn viên người Mỹ nhận được khoảng nửa triệu đô la cho mỗi phút đóng phim !!! » Trong lãnh vực truyền hình, tiểu thuyết Agatha Christie ăn khách trở lại, khi các nhân vật trong truyện được đưa lên màn ảnh nhỏ. Đầu tiên hết là nhân vật Miss Marple, có đến ba nữ diễn viên khác nhau qua nhiều thời kỳ, đã đóng vai bà cụ thích ngồi đan áo, nhưng nhờ óc quan sát tinh tế, mà tháo gỡ được nhiều nút thắt bí ẩn, để rồi phá án một cách ly kỳ. Đổi lại, theo Jérémy Picard, trong vai thám tử người Bỉ Hercule Poirot, hầu như mọi người đều đồng ý rằng không ai đóng vai này, hay bằng nam diễn viên David Suchet.  « Phải công nhận rằng trong hơn 20 năm, David Suchet đã có một lối diễn đạt xuất sắc tài tình, khi ông hóa thân thành thám tử Hercule Poirot. Điều thú vị là khi được mời đóng vai này, ông hơi đắn đo do dự vì lúc ấy ông không biết gì nhiều về thế giới của Agatha Christie. Để chuẩn bị vai này, David Suchet đã đọc toàn bộ tác phẩm, ghi chú từng chi tiết nhỏ nhặt nhất, dùng để mô tả nhân vật trong truyện : từ thói quen, dáng đi, cách ăn nói để có thể tạo ra một nhân vật gần giống nhân vật tiểu thuyết, một người có kiến thức uyên bác, có óc quan sát bén nhạy nhưng đồng thời cũng lắm tật. Bên cạnh đó, thành công của loạt phim truyền hình này phần lớn cũng là vì kịch bản phóng tác trung thành với bản gốc của tiểu thuyết. » Nửa thế kỷ sau ngày tác giả qua đời, sức cuốn hút của Agatha Christie một lần nữa bùng phát trở lại với sự xuất hiện trên mạng Netflix của một bản chuyển thể mới với tựa đề « The Seven Dials » (Kỳ án bảy mặt đồng hồ). Phim này dài ba tập và hứa hẹn nhiều tình tiết gay cấn ly kỳ xung quanh cái chết của nhiều thanh niên có liên quan đến một hội kín bí ẩn. Sự kiện có thêm một tác phẩm ít nổi tiếng (so với Hercule Poirot và Miss Marple) được dựng thành phim nhiều tập, cho thấy sức sống bền bỉ của các bộ tiểu thuyết, có mang chữ ký của nữ hoàng trinh thám Agatha Christie.

Para recordar a la gran Agatha Christie en el 50 aniversario de su fallecimiento, Juan Luis Álvarez recuerda tres series especialmente destacadas, basadas en sus libros: una que es novedad, otra que se podrá ver completa por primera vez en la misma plataforma y la mejor de todas, en su opinión. Las siete esferas (Netflix, miniserie, 3 capítulos) Inglaterra, 1925. En una lujosa fiesta en una casa de campo, una broma con siete despertadores para levantar de la cama a un encantador joven algo holgazán parece haber salido terriblemente —y mortalmente— mal. La tarea de resolver el misterio recaerá en la menos esperada de las detectives: la vivaz e inquisitiva Lady Eileen 'Bundle' Brent, quien deberá desentrañar una escalofriante conspiración que cambiará su vida y pondrá al descubierto los secretos más oscuros de la alta sociedad inglesa. Lo mejor: El magnífico arrope para esta juguetona historia menor. Bundle es una estupenda heroína moderna en un eterno clásico. Lo peor: Andan un poco sueltos los herederos a la hora de no exigir mayor respeto por las exquisitas tramas perfectamente trazadas por la abuelita, siempre interesantes y equilibradas. Trailer Poirot (Filmin, 13 temporadas, 70 episodios) Por primera vez se podrá ver toda la serie completa que se desarrolló entre 1989 y 2013 en una plataforma (Filmin). Están adaptadas prácticamente todas las novelas y relatos cortos que tienen a Poirot como protagonista, incluida "Telón", el sorprendente último caso del detective belga de las células grises. Lo mejor: David Suchet, para muchos, el mejor. Por encima de Albert Finney y Peter Ustinov. El gran respeto mostrado por la autora y el personaje Lo peor: Ojo con los empachos. Trailer Diez negritos (Movistar, 3 episodios) Diez extraños son invitados a la isla de Soldier, una roca aislada, cerca de la costa de Devon. Llevados desde el continente, con sus generosos anfitriones misteriosamente ausentes, cada uno de ellos está acusado de un crimen terrible. Cuando uno muere de repente se dan cuenta de que pueden tener un asesino entre ellos. Lo mejor: Todo, el reparto, la atmósfera aterradora, la progresión dramática... Lo peor: La polémica con el título, procedente de una canción infantil. Trailer

Drei Verfilmungen: - The Alphabet Murders (1965): Halb Komödie, halb Krimi - und beides nur halb. Lässt sich anschauen, mehr aber auch nicht. - The ABC Murders (1992 mit David Suchet): Sehr empfehlenswerte werkgetreue Verfilmung - The ABC Murders (2018 mit John Malkovitch): Sehr empfehlenswerte Neuinterpretation, allerdings sehr düster und wenig hoffnungsvoll.

Frankie and Adam had the rare privilege of talking to one of the most indelible Poirot villains of all time - David Hunter from Taken At The Flood aka Elliot Cowan - in fact, over on Discord, YOU voted him as the scariest Poirot villain of all time... In the first of what we hope will be a continuing series of discussions with the great Poirot villains, Elliot Cowan joins us for an exclusive discussion about the inner workings of adapting Agatha Christie for the screen, how he turned a few days' rehearsals into one of the most iconic villains in the series, what David Suchet was really like, the fascinating story of his acting career, and the ways in which he is using his talents to nurture the next generation of performers You can subscribe to Cosy AF, our next show, NOW on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow us on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@cosyafpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Our Patreon page is filled with all kinds of wonderful bonus materials, including videos of interviews, quizzes, bonus shows, and our deep dive into the Poirot movies! Find it at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/CosyAF⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We're on Instagram at @laboursofhercule On Threads at @laboursofhercule Or you can email us at bonjour@thelaboursofhercule.com Our amazing music was composed and produced by the fabulous Cev Moore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Hercule Poirot” was a pilot for a TV series for American television. Shown as an episode of “General Electric Theater,” it starred Martin Gabel as Poirot, who is chauffeured around the United States in a limousine tricked out with a bar, a TV set, and a phone! The pilot wasn't sold, and the episode vanished until the archives until it recently resurfaced on YouTube!Teresa Peschel, author of "Agatha Christie, She Watched" and the "International Agatha Christie, She Watched," discuss “Hercule Poirot,” based on the 1923 short story “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim,” and speculates on What Might Have Been if it had sold.Joining Teresa is her husband, technical adviser, and straight man, Bill Peschel. Together, they are Peschel Press, publisher of intriguing, intelligent, and idiosyncratic books (www.peschelpress.com).Watch "Hercule Poirot" on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ByZv3B7nCWM

Sir David Suchet has reignited his little grey cells to traverse the world, following in the footsteps of the great Agatha Christie in a new book and television series "Travels with Agatha Christie".Tony Foster is also a keen traveller, as an adventure artist he has ventured deep into the world's wildernesses, painting 17,000ft up Mount Everest and in the very heart of the Grand Canyon.Stacey McNeil is someone else who finds inspiration from nature and expresses it through her art - after being unable to find a card to send a friend struggling with their mental health...so made one herself and now her Fox Under the Moon business has sold cards and books into over 25 countries.Also, a couple of dragons fighting it out in the streets of Glastonbury for the pagan Samhain festival. Plus, the Inheritance Tracks of the broadcaster, author and Faithful...Clare Balding.Presenter: Adrian Chiles Producer: Ben Mitchell Assistant Producer: Lowri Morgan Researcher: Jesse Edwards Editor: Glyn Tansley

For the first episode of the third series of “Agatha Christie's Poirot,” we jump back to the middle of World War I and the village of Styles St. Mary. There, Captain Hastings, recovered from his wounding in the trenches, relaxes with his friends at Styles. Days of tea on the lawn, tennis, horseback riding, maybe the possibility of a romance. Then, a tragic death in the middle of the night lead to him calling on his friend Hercule Poirot for help.Teresa Peschel, author of "Agatha Christie, She Watched" and the "International Agatha Christie, She Watched," discusses the TV episode with her husband, technical adviser, and straight man, Bill Peschel. Together, they are Peschel Press, publisher of intriguing, intelligent, and idiosyncratic books, including "The Complete, Annotated Man in the Brown Suit."Mentioned in the episode:Unique Devon Tours: https://www.uniquedevontours.com/ Future episodes:Oct. 30 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, we'll discuss the "Agatha Christie's Criminal Games" episode "The Mysterious Affair at Styles." Available on Amazon Prime (MHz Choice subscriptionrequired although there is a free 7-day trial): https://www.amazon.com/Agatha-Christies-Criminal-Games/dp/B07KM54442 Nov. 6 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, we'll discuss the avant-garde Hungarian version of "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" which can be seen on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yBpN-BcpkE

In a special bonus episode, author Sally Lloyd-Jones and voice actor Sir David Suchet offer a behind-the-scenes look at their collaboration on “Jesus, Our True Friend.” They delve into their individual approaches to portraying biblical figures, emphasizing the importance of simplifying stories for children without oversimplifying them. The episode also highlights their shared anticipation of hearing Jesus' laugh and their conviction that everything they know about God points to love.   Quotes “Sometimes I think in all that we give children, we forget to give them hope, and we are in danger of putting all the emphasis on them and what they're supposed to be doing. And that just leaves you in despair because that's the moral code and we can't live up to it. I just wanted them to have [Jesus, Our True Friend] that would tell them, ‘You have a true friend and He's with you and He loves you.'” - Sally Lloyd-Jones “As a little girl, I had this wrong idea about God. I thought he was hard and cruel and angry and about the rules. And it's so wrong, isn't it? [Jesus, Our True Friend] shows God's heart that we know comes through His son, Jesus.” - Sally Lloyd-Jones  “Being simple isn't simplistic. In my writing, I have to distill down, but I must never dumb down. I must always get to the heart of the truth.” - Sally Lloyd-Jones  “We're told in the Bible that we see God through Jesus. My goal was to show how kind God the Father is and God the Son. And it's all coming from joy, that's how the world began.” - Sally Lloyd-Jones  “It's all love. God is love.” - Sir David Suchet “In the West, we try to be rational and understand everything, and unless something equals something else, we're not content. But with faith, with spirituality, one has to learn to be content living with mystery.” - Sir David Suchet  “You have to be known to feel the love, don't you? If He knows you completely and He loves you completely, then there's huge comfort.” - Sally Lloyd-Jones   Resources Mentioned in This Episode Jesus, Our True Friend The Jesus Storybook Bible The Story of God's Great Love collection David Suchet Hercule Poirot Madeleine L'Engle Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey  C.S. Lewis  Meister Eckhart   Connect with Sally Lloyd-Jones The Story of God's Great Love Instagram The Story of God's Great Love Facebook The Story of God's Great Love YouTube Sally's website Sally's Facebook Sally's Instagram *Episode produced by Four Eyes Media*  

Episode 53 — This week we start with a deep dive into the social politics of pizza at parties — why does ordering a pie feel so awkward compared to serving any other food? Then we shift gears into our ongoing Murder on the Orient Express series, tackling the 2010 David Suchet TV adaptation. We cover:

We all remember watching the t.v show Harry and The Hendersons in our youth, so we figured we’d better check out the movie, especially considering it had podcast favourite John Lithgow in it. Our questions this week: is this the most rugged and sexy we have ever seen David Suchet?, would a fan casting of … Continue reading "462: Harry and The Hendersons [1987] Movie Discussion"

THEY TAKE THE PLANE BACK!Will, Ian & Nora TAKE THE PLANE BACK!They do what they have to do, and make the-EXECUTIVE DECISION (1996) R 133minutesDirected by: Stuart Baird. Starring: Kurt Russell, John Leguizamo, Joe Morton, Oliver Platt, Halle Berry, B.D. Wong, David Suchet, Whip Hubley, Andreas Katsulas, J.T. Walsh, Ingo Neuhaus, Richard Riehle, Ken Jenkins, Steven Seagal, Shaun Toub and Many Other Talented People!00:01:00- First Thoughts00:15:00- Fight of Flight discussion00:25:00- EXECUTIVE DECISION (1996)00:28:00- Tasty Morsels00:35:00- Rating/Review01:15:00- Totals01:16:00- Next Week/ByePatreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/THELastActionCritics⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: @TheLastActionCriticsemail:   Thelastactioncritics@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Next Week: Pride & Prejudice (2005) with Special Guest A.E. Bennett

Attempted Murder cases, racists and trams and David Suchet. Rhys and Kyran (Georgia's finishing off her album) barely get to the mailbag because they spend too long dissecting what is essentially their own hero complexes. It's Fwends!CONTACTText - +61 (0)431 345 145Email - fwendspod@gmail.comMail - PO Box 24144, Melbourne, VIC 3001, AustraliaRATE AND REVIEWOf course you've already subscribed or followed the show, now we'd love you to leave a rating and a review. In whatever podcast app you're in right now, just throw down the 5 stars. Will make our day, and help to get the podcast into more people's ears (which will ultimately mean even bigger name guests for you!)INSTAGRAMFwends PodGeorgia MooneyRhys NicholsonKyran NicholsonYOUTUBESoon (how soon we don't know) you will be able to watch clips of the show on YouTube, click through and hit subscribe now to get them the second they appear: Fwends Pod YouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Puntata a cura di Jacopo Bulgarini d'Elci e Livio Pacella.Tra le infinite versioni di uno dei personaggi più iconici di tutti i tempi, Hercule Poirot, una è entrata potentemente nell'immaginario collettivo. Agatha Christie's Poirot, o più spesso semplicemente Poirot: serie andata in onda dal 1989 al 2013.Ben tredici stagioni per un totale di 70 episodi, che coprono l'intero corpus di romanzi e racconti che la Christie edifica attorno al suo celebre detective. Ma soprattutto un attore, David Suchet, che col personaggio si confronta per 24 anni. In una performance sublime. Fino a letteralmente diventare Poirot...“1 classico in 2” è uno dei format del podcast di Mondoserie: conversazioni a due voci su serie che hanno segnato l'immaginario. Leggi il nostro articolo su Poirot: https://www.mondoserie.it/poirot/ Parte del progetto: https://www.mondoserie.it/  Iscriviti al podcast sulla tua piattaforma preferita o su: https://www.spreaker.com/show/mondoserie-podcast  Collegati a MONDOSERIE sui social:https://www.facebook.com/mondoserie https://www.instagram.com/mondoserie.it/   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwXpMjWOcPbFwdit0QJNnXQ  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mondoserie/ 

Recorded November 15, 2024 at Washington Hall - Seattle, Washington “Don Ameche definitely kicked the shit out of people in his prime!” - Andrew  On our first Summer Live episode of the season, it's our raucous show from last year in Seattle where we talked all things Harry and the Hendersons! Why do they make little kid camouflage clothes? Are all the actors underselling how much Harry smells? How did they not have a scene where Harry gets shaved so he can work at the sporting goods store? And wow, what were with those weird TV show plots? PLUS: An alternate ending where Lithgow gets stuck in a Good Son situation between Harry and his future serial killer son!  Harry and the Hendersons stars John Lithgow, Melinda Dillon, Margaret Langrick, Joshua Rudoy, David Suchet, Lainie Kazan, Don Ameche, M. Emmet Walsh, and the late, great Kevin Peter Hall as Harry; directed by William Dear. Don't sleep on snagging your tickets to our 15th Anniversary show this December where we're talking all things Arnold in Total Recall! It's gonna be a gas and we wanna see you there! Click through for tickets now! Throughout 2025, we'll be donating 100% of our earnings from our merch shop to the Center for Reproductive Rights. So head over and check out all these masterful designs and see what tickles your fancy! Shirts? Phone cases? Canvas prints? We got all that and more! Check it out and kick in for a good cause! Original cover art by Felipe Sobreiro.

The great actor Sir David Suchet is Gyles's guest today: and this conversation gets behind Hercule Poirot - Sir David's most famous role - and delves into David's childhood, his schooldays and his early acting career at the National Youth Theatre and the RSC. Gyles finds out about David's difficult relationship with his father, the great doctor, Jack Suchet. He finds out about his close relationship with his mother and his grandparents, and the influence they had on him. He finds out about David's schooldays, his prowess on the rugby pitch, and how a teacher at school spotted his acting talent. Gyles also hears about how David's work ethic and attention to detail has sometimes led to tricky moments in rehearsals. The episode ends with a surprise which you won't want to miss!This is a fascinating, candid and sometimes very touching interview - thank you very much to Sir David for your time and for your honesty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The great actor Sir David Suchet is Gyles's guest today: and this conversation gets behind Hercule Poirot - Sir David's most famous role - and delves into David's childhood, his schooldays and his early acting career at the National Youth Theatre and the RSC. Gyles finds out about David's difficult relationship with his father, the great doctor, Jack Suchet. He finds out about his close relationship with his mother and his grandparents, and the influence they had on him. He finds out about David's schooldays, his prowess on the rugby pitch, and how a teacher at school spotted his acting talent. Gyles also hears about how David's work ethic and attention to detail has sometimes led to tricky moments in rehearsals. The episode ends with a surprise which you won't want to miss! This is a fascinating, candid and sometimes very touching interview - thank you very much to Sir David for your time and for your honesty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Annie Parsons is a graduate homeschooler who lives at home, saves her money for family trips to England, and somehow still finds time to read widely, support her friends, teach remotely, and charm preschoolers during storytime at the library. She's an illustrator and storyteller with a quiet wit, a love of video games, and a deep appreciation for the little things that make life feel magical. Her art reflects all of that—warm, whimsical, and full of heart. Find her here:InstagramWebsiteAnnie's book: Stone SoupStone Soup resources and coloring pagesSkillshare Classes SubstackBooks mentioned/discussed in this episode: Framed by Frank Cottrell BoyceWomen of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds by Jen WilkinThe Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric CarleThe Artist Who Painted the Blue Horse by Eric CarleThe Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. LewisThe Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Picture This: How Pictures Work Molly BangThe Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly BangGoose by Molly BangThe Yellow Ball by Molly BangFrost Light by Danielle BullenSparrow in the Sun by Danielle Bullen17:00 St. Patrick's Day Shamrocks by Mary BerendesNellie Bly: America's Greatest Reporter by Iris Noble; republished by Renewed Books 5/25Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, republished by Renewed BooksTen Days in a Madhouse: A Story of the Intrepid Reporter Nellie Bly by Nellie BlyA Race Around the World: The True Story of Nellie Bly & Elizabeth Bisland by Caroline Starr Rose; illustrated by Alexandra ByeNellie Vs. Elizabeth: Two Daredevil Journalists' Breakneck Race around the World by Kate Hannigan; illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett; illustrated by Jon KlassenLuli and the Language of Tea by Andrea Wang; illustrated by Hyewon YumUmami by Jacob GrantSaturday by Oge MoraThank You, Omu by Oge MoraThis is Worship: art by Anthony GorolaWorld Famous Paintings by Rockwell Kent (a book of art) The Jesus Storybook Bible narrated by David Suchet- the story of Leah Kiki's Delivery Service by Eiko KadonoVideo Games We Love:Hello Kitty: Island AdventureAnimal CrossingThe Master's Pupil Ambre's kids favorite Poirot episode: “The Veiled Lady” Leuchtturm journalsThanks for visiting Reshelving Alexandria! This post is free, so feel free to share it with a friend—or three!

Mistr ve svém oboru. To by se dalo říct jak o postavě detektivního seriálu, tak o jeho protagonistovi. Onou postavou není nikdo jiný, než Hercule Poirot, kterého po pětadvacet let hrál David Suchet. Narodil se 2. května 1946. Právě jemu se věnují dnešní Příběhy z kalendáře, které jej však ukazují též jako muzikanta, fotografa a především velmi pečlivého a přemýšlivého herce.

Many Puritans, even leading Puritans, did not proffer much for publication and thus remain little known today. One such (relatively) unpublished leader of the Puritan movement during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I was Laurence Chaderton (1536–1640). A gifted preacher, college Master, and Bible translator, his life and legacy repay careful attention.    Featured Article: – 'Laurence Chaderton: Puritan, Scholar, and Bible Translator', Nick Lunn, Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue 537 (June 2008).   Christian Heritage Walks in Cambridge: Listeners wishing to explore Cambridge's Christian heritage in the company of a guide are encouraged to look into the walks offered at the Round Church. The University Walk, which provides a general overview of Cambridge's history, with special attention to how it has been shaped by the Christian faith, often stops at Emmanuel College. Private walks are available on request. For more info. and booking: https://roundchurchcambridge.org/ Watch 'Saints and Scholars', an overview of Cambridge's Christian connections narrated by David Suchet: https://youtu.be/txLJm2UjYZM?si=tiTFVmKyhHGbyh2-   Explore the work of the Banner of Truth: www.banneroftruth.org Subscribe to the Magazine (print/digital/both): www.banneroftruth.org/magazine Leave us a voice message: www.speakpipe.com/magazinepodcast

Israel has launched airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen - vowing to destroy its infrastructure. We ask whether Israel has opened a new phase in the Middle East war.Also tonight: Twenty years on from the devastating Boxing Day tsunami, the remarkable account of a man who survived the worst rail disaster in history. And 40 years after Joan Hickson's portrayal of Miss Marple hit the screens, we reflect on why many consider her the best to have played the role - drawing on the little grey cells of TV's Poirot, David Suchet.

This week, six millennials are astonishingly successful finding a large house to rent — the power points don't work, there's no mobile reception and the walls are quite literally made of alien woodlice. Oh, and it collapses into dust on their first night. It's Knock Knock. Notes and links Brendan quickly identifies two of the film antecedents of this story: The Evil Dead (1981), with its demonically possessed trees, and Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), whose antagonist has a complex relationship with his mother. Nathan first encounters David Suchet as Blott in Blott on the Landscape (1985), a BBC adaptation of Tom Sharpe's 1975 satirical novel of the same name. Knock Knock was written by Mike Bartlett, who was famous for a TV series called Dr Foster (2015), starring Suranne Jones as a woman who starts to suspect her husband of infidelity. David Suchet's first appearance in a Poirot property starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot — the 1985 made-for-TV movie Thirteen at Dinner (1985), an adaptation of Christie's Lord Edgeware Dies (1933), in which Suchet played Inspector Japp. Simon refers to the vault-related theorising of Whovians, a comedy aftershow that accompanied Series 10, 11 and 12 of Doctor Who on ABC-TV in Australia. Our very own Adam Richard was a regular in the show's first two seasons. And finally, Brendan recklessly introduces us to another possible inspiration for this episode, the 1977 film Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, which we would all have been better off not knowing about. Follow us Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.bsky.social, Brendan is at @retrobrendo.bsky.social, and Simon is on X at @simonmoore72. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow Flight Through Entirety on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we'll take advantage of the no-fact-checking rule to try and convince you that we're actually your real parents. And more You can find links to all of the podcasts we're involved in on our podcasts page. But here's a summary of where we're up to right now. 500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. It's first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025. The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2. On 5 October, Blakes 7 came to BFI Southbank for a screening of the newly remastered HD versions of Seek–Locate–Destroy and Orac and a Q & A with Jan Chappell and Sally Knyvette. And Maximum Power was there. So check out today's newly released episode with our hot takes on the new versions of these beloved fan classics. And finally there's our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, they went back in time to see the origin story of breakout character Peanut Hamper in Star Trek: The Next Generation's The Quality of Life.

There is something I can't help but love about cosy mysteries. The genre is probably the second best represented on my bookcase (after historical romances - represented purely because of my love for Johanna Lindsey). So, what is it about the genre that I enjoy so much? Why am I always on the lookout for more, and where did my love of them come from? Was it the David Suchet show when I was in my 20s, or did my love stem from something much further back in my past? This week I am going to take a look at a few of my recent (and not so recent) favourites and dig into what I enjoy so much about the genre that is Cosy Mystery.

Co vytváří česká Společnost Agathy Christie? Kdo jsou její čestní členové? A jaké bylo pro její předsedkyni setkání s vnukem spisovatelky? „Byl strašně rád. Kdokoliv, kdo má rád jeho babičku a podporuje jí, tak to strašně oceňuje,“ říká v pořadu Host Radiožurnálu předsedkyně Společnosti Agathy Christie Jana Ohnesorg.Všechny díly podcastu Host Radiožurnálu můžete pohodlně poslouchat v mobilní aplikaci mujRozhlas pro Android a iOS nebo na webu mujRozhlas.cz.

Poirot and Hastings are drawn into a seriously spooky locked-room mystery when Gervase Chevenix, who outbid Poirot at an auction for an antique mirror, dies from an apparent suicide. Can Poirot solve the mystery of Gervase's death, or does he need more time to reflect? Plus, a magnifico quiz from one of our wonderful listeners, details of our meet up on May 11th and more! Our Patreon page is filled with all kinds of wonderful bonus materials, including videos of interviews, quizzes, bonus shows, and our deep dive into the Poirot movies! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/CosyAF To find out more about David Suchet's INCREDIBLE Poirot And More: A Retrospective - Streaming Show - go to https://originaltheatre.com/ If you'd like to get in contact with us, you can follow us on Twitter at @labourshecule On Instagram at @laboursofhercule On Threads at @laboursofhercule Or you can email us at bonjour@thelaboursofhercule.com Our amazing music was composed and produced by the fabulous Cev Moore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Poirot and Japp travel back in time, and across the continent, in order to lay to rest the puzzle of a mysterious murder from the past - one that Poirot himself has kept locked inside his heart for decades. But what will happen when the secret is revealed..? Also, our very special guest and friend, Sir David Suchet, joins us once more for a VERY special announcement... Our Patreon page is filled with all kinds of wonderful bonus materials, including videos of interviews, quizzes, bonus shows, and our deep dive into the Poirot movies! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/CosyAF To find out more about David Suchet's INCREDIBLE Poirot And More: A Retrospective - Streaming Show - go to https://originaltheatre.com/ If you'd like to get in contact with us, you can follow us on Twitter at @labourshecule On Instagram at @laboursofhercule On Threads at @laboursofhercule Or you can email us at bonjour@thelaboursofhercule.com Our amazing music was composed and produced by the fabulous Cev Moore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Bartlett switches from Doctor Foster to Doctor Who, but can David Suchet lift a story with an ending that takes an unexpected left turn towards pleasantville Presented by J.R. Southall, with Jon Arnold and Matt Barber

We discuss the ITV (1992), BBC (2018), and Frank Tashlin (1965) screen adaptations of Agatha Christie's 'The ABC Murders'. An unusual plot for the mystery great, how have histories most lauded (and least) tweaked the plot for the moving image? From spellbinding performances by David Suchet, Donald Sumpter, and John Malkovich, to laughable replacement-by-buxom-blondes, you're spoiled for choice when it comes to the Queen of Crime. How can the various Poirots get to the bottom of this case, and who ebbs & flows along the way? We're also joined by Natalie Conyer and Chad Taylor, to talk about their contributions to the upcoming collection 'Dark Deeds Down Under 2', the second anthology edited by Craig Sisterson in Clan Destine Press' mission to render series characters in short story. Thank you to Clan Destine Press for providing copies of 'Dark Deeds Down Under' and its sequel, and their help in arranging our time with Natalie and Chad.

Welcome to Not A Bomb, your favorite podcast about some of the biggest cinema bombs in movie history. On this episode, we're thrilled to welcome Jose, host of the newly revamped Watch/Skip+ podcast. Our focus this week is 2017's action thriller, American Assassin, or, as someone labeled the film, “baby's first Bourne.” But hey, this episode gives us an excuse to talk about Dylan O'Brien and mention the fantastic film Love and Monsters again. American Assassin starts with one heck of a punch, but does it have what it takes to captivate today's modern audience? How does the film stack up against powerhouse franchises like James Bond or Mission Impossible? Before we get too deep into our analysis of the film, we spend a little time exploring the essential elements that either make or break an action-packed cinematic experience.American Assassin is directed by Michael Cuesta and stars Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keeton, Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, David Suchet, Navid Negahban, Scott Adkins, and Taylor Kitsch.If you want to leave feedback or suggest a movie bomb, please drop us a line at NotABombPod@gmail.com or Contact Us - here. Also, if you like what you hear, leave a review on Apple Podcast.Cast: Brad, Troy, Jose

Mes amis, it is our honour to present our conversation with Hercule Poirot himself - Sir David Suchet - who was kind enough to join us for an entire morning to talk about not just his legendary tenure as fiction's greatest detective, but also the craft of acting itself, his favourite episodes and stories from Agatha Christie's canon, and whether or not he would ever return to the role (the answer may surprise you..) We also present David with your comments and questions, as well as a very particular memory from a very special day in Frankie's life... Our Patreon page is live now, and from February 2024, will be filled with all kinds of wonderful bonus materials, including videos of interviews, quizzes, bonus shows, and our deep dive into the Poirot movies! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/CosyAF Our all new merchandise store is now up and running at https://thelaboursofhercule.com/ For details on our LIVE Event in March, click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-labours-of-hercule-poirot-podcasting-and-more-tickets-788246345037?aff=odcleoeventsincollection If you'd like to get in contact with us, you can follow us on Twitter at @labourshecule On Instagram at @laboursofhercule On Threads at @laboursofhercule Or you can email us at bonjour@thelaboursofhercule.com Our amazing music was composed and produced by the fabulous Cev Moore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our last episode of 2023, the Sneople tackle a topic that has (probably) been a long time coming - the Kenneth Branagh Poirot adaptations! After a brief overview of the other Poirot content they're familiar with (Hi, David Suchet), the Sneople discuss all three movies at length. In true Sneople fashion, this covers the things they loved, the choices they respect, and the parts of the movies they wish they could unsee - mostly, large portions of Death on the Nile. There's also discussions of adaptations of older pieces of media in general, Kenneth Branagh's other work, and Tom Hiddleston finally being free of his fae pact with the MCU. This episode also contains multiple discussions of Shakespeare adaptations featuring an uncanny valley version of Matty making their own generic response audio clips. Get ready for an eventual Matty soundboard, I guess.

Hercule Poirot himself, David Suchet, narrates the classic Agatha Christie tale, Murder on the Orient Express. Originally published in the UK in 1934, the story captivated readers with its intricate plot and unforgettable characters. To avoid confusion with another novel titled "Orient Express," the US edition was released in 1934 as "Murder in the Calais Coach." Both versions, priced at 7/6 in the UK and $2.00 in the US, promised a thrilling journey filled with suspense and mystery.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5999743/advertisement

This "Paltrocast" features interviews with Chicago's Lee Loughnane, actress Lea Salonga, actor Sir David Suchet, director Deon Taylor and filmmakers The Vang Brothers. Theme song by Steve Schiltz.

Watch the video of this podcast HERE!Okay, please excuse Jade's hot takes, no offense is intended, she just really loves Agatha Christie and David Suchet. Bonus content and all full length episodes available on PATREONDon't forget to subscribe to the YOUTUBE channel- helps us out immensely and ensures you don't miss a thing…Leave us your feedcrack on any films we've covered or send us suggestions for future episodes by emailing:Shallwecomparethee@gmail.com or on Facebook and Instagram. Written feedback or voice messages accepted!Facebook group:Shall We Compare Thee? A Remake & Sequel Group Instagram: @ShallWeCompareThee...Here's talkin' to you, kid. Cheers!Follow Jade on social media:Instagram- @Jadethenakedlady Tiktok- @Jade8greenYoutube- @JadeAndersonactor Website- Jade-anderson.comJade's other podcasts:Shall We Compare Thee- A Remake &Sequel PodcastPerfectly Marvelous! Only Murders in the BuildingPerfectly marvelous! -A Marvelous Mrs. Maisel PodcastMurder Magnets -A Poker Face PodcastDead to Us- A Dead to Me PodcastFollow Paul on social media:Paul's pub quiz/trivia site- quizfixInstagram- @quizfix Facebook- Quizfix Paul's trivia podcast with Monika - Stream Quizfix Podcast on SoundCloud Paul's FB- PaulJensen Paul's band on FB- The Profits

Subscribe to "Shall We Compare Thee" Podcast feed HERE! Never miss an episode ;-)Watch the video of this podcast HERE!Okay, please excuse Jade's hot takes, no offense is intended, she just really loves Agatha Christie and David Suchet. Bonus content and all full length episodes available on PATREONDon't forget to subscribe to the YOUTUBE channel- helps us out immensely and ensures you don't miss a thing…Leave us your feedcrack on any films we've covered or send us suggestions for future episodes by emailing:Shallwecomparethee@gmail.com or on Facebook and Instagram. Written feedback or voice messages accepted!Facebook group:Shall We Compare Thee? A Remake & Sequel Group Instagram: @ShallWeCompareThee...Here's talkin' to you, kid. Cheers!Follow Jade on social media:Instagram- @Jadethenakedlady Tiktok- @Jade8greenYoutube- @JadeAndersonactor Website- Jade-anderson.comJade's other podcasts:Shall We Compare Thee- A Remake &Sequel PodcastPerfectly Marvelous! Only Murders in the BuildingPerfectly marvelous! -A Marvelous Mrs. Maisel PodcastMurder Magnets -A Poker Face PodcastDead to Us- A Dead to Me PodcastFollow Paul on social media:Paul's pub quiz/trivia site- quizfixInstagram- @quizfix Facebook- Quizfix Paul's trivia podcast with Monika - Stream Quizfix Podcast on SoundCloud Paul's FB- PaulJensen Paul's band on FB- The Profits

Gay homosexuals Nick and Joseph discuss ⁠Executive Decision⁠ - a 1996 American action thriller film directed by ⁠Stuart Baird⁠, starring ⁠Kurt Russell⁠, ⁠Steven Seagal⁠, ⁠Halle Berry⁠, ⁠John Leguizamo⁠, ⁠Oliver Platt⁠, ⁠Joe Morton⁠, ⁠David Suchet⁠ and ⁠B.D. Wong⁠. Additional topics include: -Sherman Hemsley's sexuality -Minneapolis restaurants -The deaths of Evan Ellingson and Johnny Ruffo -And too many films to mention Want to send them stuff? Fish Jelly PO Box 461752 Los Angeles, CA 90046 Find merch here: https://fishjellyfilmreviews.myspreadshop.com/all Venmo @fishjelly Visit their website at www.fishjellyfilms.com Find their podcast at the following: Anchor: https://anchor.fm/fish-jelly Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/388hcJA50qkMsrTfu04peH Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fish-jelly/id1564138767 Find them on Instagram: Nick (@ragingbells) Joseph (@joroyolo) Fish Jelly (@fishjellyfilms) Find them on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/ragingbells/ https://letterboxd.com/joroyolo/ Nick and Joseph are both Tomatometer-approved critics at Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/nicholas-bell https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/joseph-robinson --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fish-jelly/support

It's getting spooky (and even a little sad) in the world of Branagh Poirot, but don't worry it's still cozy! Cozier than ever, perhaps. We've got Gillian Walters, Poirot fan and arbitress of all things cozy (which is the name of her podcast), here to help us tell you all about this mystery movie with as few spoilers as possible.What's Good Alonso - Historically Black PhrasesGillian - Morro Bay's seaweed-wrapped sea ottersDrea - Free COVID tests are backITIDICWGA and Studios Reach a Tentative DealAmazon is Pivoting to an Ad-Supported Model60% of Stop Making Sense's IMAX Opening Weekend was Under 35Staff PicksAlonso - Invisible BeautyGillian - You Are So Not Invited to My Bat MitzvahDrea - Juan of the DeadLeave a message for the Hotline!With:Drea ClarkAlonso DuraldeGillian WaltersIfy NwadiweProducer Marissa FlaxbartSr. Producer Laura Swisher

Kevin and Chris traipse back to the mid-90's, of PBS "Mystery!" vintage, to revisit one of Kevin's favorite childhood detective characters—Poirot, Agatha Christie's indefatigable, razor-sharp Belgian dandy investigator, complete with his trademark immovable mustache. Kevin presents two episodes of the classic series, featuring David Suchet as the titular detective.

If someone asked you to retell the life story of Peter or Paul, how would you go about it? Ray Bruce set out to do this with a documentary film crew and one of England's most beloved actors, David Suchet. Together, they followed in the footsteps of the Apostles Peter and Paul from Galilee to Jerusalem and beyond, seeking to tell the story behind two of the New Testament's most captivating figures. On this episode of the Great Stories podcast, you'll hear Ray Bruce recount what went into the research and filming of these projects, as well why he finds the lives and ministries of Peter and Paul so compelling. This podcast was originally published on June 23, 2021.

David Suchet is a British actor known for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and captivating portrayal of Agatha Christie's Inspector Hercule Poirot. But there's something else that's even more important to him than his stellar acting career—Jesus. In this episode, David Suchet talks about encountering Christ late in life, how he approaches acting as a Christian, and what Jesus means to him now. (Repost from December 30, 2020) Going Deeper David Suchet always hoped to one day portray Paul in a movie or play. Instead, he shot a documentary for the BBC following in his footsteps. What the trailer here. Click here to get your own copy of David Suchet's DVD “In the Footsteps of St. Paul.”

David Suchet is a British actor who encountered Jesus late in life. He hoped to one day portray Paul in a movie or a play. Instead, he shot a documentary for the BBC following in his footsteps.

Fifteen years ago, Jason Statham was gradually making his mark as one of our most reliable action stars having already headlined two Transporter movies and the first of two Crank movies.  Amidst all of this action insanity, he took a bit of a departure with a more cerebral starring role in this labyrinthine bank heist thriller based on a crazy series of true events occurring in London in 1971.  He leads an amateur gang of thieves out to raid the underground vault of a nearby bank who end up all biting off WAY more than they could have ever expected to chew as they end up getting mixed up with local druglords, government agents, and even members of the Royal Family!  Roger Donaldson directs this underrated gem of a thriller also starring Saffron Burrows and David Suchet.Host: Geoff Gershon  Editors: Geoff and Ella GershonProducer: Marlene Gershonhttps://livingforthecinema.com/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Living-for-the-Cinema-Podcast-101167838847578Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecinema/Letterboxd:https://letterboxd.com/Living4Cinema/

On this week's show, we take a look at 1986's first entry in the fighter pilot genre, Iron Eagle (Sorry Top Gun). Starring Louis Gossett Jr., Jason Gedrick, and David Suchet, this movie's unintentionally hilarious plot is only overshadowed by its over the top performances, but at least it moves at a swift pace.  Be sure to subscribe. Enjoy!

Get acquainted with some of the most popular French and Italian saints, and learn why they remain important to their countrymen. Plus, actor David Suchet shares what he discovered while making a documentary about the life and times of St. Peter, and the first-century world he inhabited in Galilee. For more information on Travel with Rick Steves - including episode descriptions, program archives and related details - visit www.ricksteves.com.