Big Gay Longcat's Big Gay Longblog: Purrot

Across 70 episodes made over 24 years (between 1989 and 2013), ITV adapted nearly all of Agatha Christie's stories about Purrot, the great detective. They were a mix of shorter and longer episodes (generally either 50 or 90 minutes), with the longer ones at first being reserved for the more prestigious or famous of the novels, before the shorter episodes were phased out completely towards the end of the run.

I have not read any of the original books, so cannot compare the adaptations to them, so any comparisons can only be to other filmed versions of Purrot such as the ones starring Peter Ustinov. Even if individual adaptations might not have been the best, the TV series Purrot, David Suchet, has absolutely become the standard portrayal of the character simply by virtue of having played Purrot the longest.

The memorable episodes of the series are, for the most part, the famous ones. This is partly because there are other adaptations for me to compare them to, and these are not always favourable to the TV series - the most famous Purrot case by far is Murder on the Orient Express, and the 1974 film version starring Albert Finney is clearly superior, even if Finney makes for an inferior Purrot to Suchet.

Of the less well-known stories that stood out from the crowd in the TV series I would single out Peril at End House (1990), an early episode with a memorable guest appearance by Polly "Atia" Walker, The ABC Murders (1992) thanks to Donald Sumpter, and Dumb Witness (1996) thanks to Snubby as Bob the doggy.

The main appeal of the early episodes, aside from spotting guest actors that I recognise from other things (Peter Capaldi, Andrew "Jarvik" Burt, and Christopher Eccleston, to name but a few - the latter well before he became famous), is the dynamic between the regular characters, Purrot and his companions Captain Hastings (Hugh "baddy from Edge of Darkness" Fraser), Chief Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson), and Miss Lemon (Pauline "Cleopatra" Moran). Each of these take their turn to be the Watson (or, in Japp's case, the Lestrade) to Purrot's Holmes, as well as frequently providing sources of comic relief.

Hastings' intelligence varied depending upon who was writing him, at times approaching the barely-functional levels of Nigel Bruce's Stupid Watson. This was because there were a number of different writers over the course of the TV series, each with their own quirks. Clive Exton was the main writer, generally responsible for the more solid scripts. Anthony Horowitz was also reliable - still early in his career, but not so early as when he wrote for Robin of Sherwood with a level of historical inaccuracy that was questionable even by that series' standards.

Less successful was David Renwick, whose four scripts were characterised by more outright komedy than was typical for the series, and by Purrot taking up hobbies (such as close up magic) which would never be referred to again after that episode. No surprises that this is the same David Renwick who would go on to create Jonathan Creek six years later.

Mark Gatiss wrote (or co-wrote) three episodes towards the end of the series, and let's just say they are none of them among the show's best installments.

Evil Under the Sun (2001) was the last time Purrot, Hastings, Japp and Miss Lemon would all appear together - except for a reunion in The Big Four (2013), which barely counts because the three companions hardly interacted with Purrot in that one at all - and it marks a turning point in the series.

Starting with Five Little Pigs (2003), the series entered its Dark Age, which was en vogue for a lot of TV drama (and TV comedy for that matter) around that time. Plots were grimmer, with direction, lighting, and soundtrack to match. It was at this point the series dropped the iconic Art Deco title sequence and theme tune* that had been present since the beginning.

And humour was for the most part banished (save for Purrot's comic mannerisms, which I suppose were too well-established a part of his characterisation for Suchet to abandon). The reason why this series' Murder on the Orient Express suffers compared to the '70s film is because it was made during this era, with the result that it is po-faced and just a lot less... well... fun, as a viewing experience.

Towards the very end of the series, the last few mellowed out a bit and comedic moments were allowed to creep back in, as evidenced by Zoë Wanamaker's portrayal of new semi-regular Ariadne Oliver, a writer of murder-mysteries about a Finnish detective, so obviously a parody of Agatha Christie herself. Mrs Oliver first appeared in 2006, which was in the very heart of the Dark Age, but her mannerisms and eccentricities were allowed to become broader over time as the komedy slipped back in.

The cliché of the "evil voice" (whereby a baddy starts speaking with a noticeably more evil voice after they have been exposed as being a baddy) was played straight quite often in the early days of the series, although it was less common later on, perhaps because it was so brutally parodied by That Mitchell and Webb Look in 2009?

Another cliché the series frequently employed was that of the "drawing room exposé" (which Agatha Christie, and Purrot especially, is practically synonymous with) where Purrot would gather all the suspects together - usually in a drawing room - before explaining how the crime was done and who did it. Surprisingly, this wasn't used as often as you might expect, at least to begin with, it only became ubiquitous by the middle of the series.