Another BBC radio play, this time directly recorded from BBC 7’s Listen Again page a few weeks ago, was Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. This was a bit of a gamble in terms of my time: I read boatloads of Christie novels when I was younger, and remember very few of them, so I wasn’t sure how well they would hold up. I also didn’t know if Poirot’s accent would be confusing or grating. Here, John Moffatt gives a clear and sympathetic performance as Poirot; the many other characters are generally distinguishable, though the adaptation could have done a slightly better job of putting the characters’ name early in the dialogue.
Death on the Nile is the one where a rich woman on her honeymoon is killed during a boat tour of the Nile. There were, of course, quite a few people on the boat with reasons to kill her, as the audience well knows by the time the murder happens, about halfway through. (It seems most of the murder mysteries I read start after the murder, so it was interesting to spend quite a lot of time with the victim and suspects ahead of time.) I was thoroughly faked out by the mystery, though I don’t know if this is a testament to Christie’s cleverness or to my general ineptitude. Overall, I enjoyed this a good deal more than I expected, and it gave me a number of other BBC plays to look forward to.
If you haven’t seen David Suchet in the BBC Television adaptations of Poirot, you’re missing out. He is Poirot, as far as I’m concerned. They air regularly on the Biography channel (usually on Sundays).
They made Death on the Nile as a TV movie, recently, and it’s quite well done. Check it out.
Skwid: I’ll probably pass on TV Poirot, just because I have much more free audio time (1 hr daily commute in the car) than free TV time, but if I’m ever channel-surfing I’ll keep it in mind.
I have to second the Suchet recommendation. He is so consummately fussy, so perfectly fastidious. It borders on cognitive dissonance to try to compare his take on Poirot with (say) Peter Ustinov’s. A large part of it is visual (although his vocal mannerisms are perfect), so you might try to spring the time free to watch one or two of the episodes. The mysteries are pretty banal—I prefer Miss Marple for plots, and prefer other authors to Christie—but the character is priceless.
tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!