by David Suchet
Meanwhile, Sarah enjoyed herself more and more as the shooting progressed, and would arrive on the set in the morning and say to me – rather embarrassingly – ‘You’re him. You’re him reborn.’ I was not quite sure what she meant until I realised that she was comparing me with Laurence Olivier.
I thought to myself, ‘I should be so lucky.’
I also loved being with my old friend Edward Hardwicke. We had both been at the Royal Shakespeare Company, although at different times, and he had appeared beside me in my first major television role, in Oppenheimer. Between takes on the set, we would tell each other stories about the wonderful times we had had together all those years ago. It all helped to make The Hollow one of the most memorable Poirots for me.
Sadly, the film itself did not quite live up to the cast. Even though Nick Dear wrote a terrific script, it could not quite save it. As with Sad Cypress, Dame Agatha herself admitted that the story was not really a case for Poirot – and it shows. No matter how you look at it, he seems a little out of place. In her autobiography, she admitted, ‘The Hollow was a book I always thought I had ruined by the introduction of Poirot. I had got used to having Poirot in my books, and so naturally he had come into this one, but he is all wrong there. He did his stuff all right, but how much better, I kept thinking, would the book have been without him.’
In fact, when Dame Agatha came to turn her book into a play in 1951, just six years after it was first published, ‘out went Poirot’, as she put it herself, and in came Detective Inspector Colquhoun from Scotland Yard. She believed that Poirot would have drawn the audience’s attention away from the other characters, whereas a blander policeman would focus attention on them. It would also be fair to say that she had not always enjoyed the various stage Poirots who had appeared in the first years after she created the character.
Nevertheless, I think our two-hour television version, under Simon Langton’s direction, worked pretty well, and I believe it stands up now, looking back. But it certainly does not bear comparison with the fourth and final film in our new series, a reworking of one of Dame Agatha’s classic stories, Death on the Nile. That was in a rather different class.
But the honest truth is that all four of these new films are very dear to me, and I am exceptionally proud to leave them behind as a legacy to Dame Agatha. I only wish that she had been there to see them, because I think she would have enjoyed them all, and especially our new version of Death on the Nile, which we shot mostly on location in Egypt, from a new script by Kevin Elyot, and directed by Andy Wilson. She would certainly have enjoyed the fact that, for the SS Karnak, we used the same river-steamer that had appeared in Peter Ustinov’s all-star film version of the story in 1978, starring Bette Davis, David Niven and Mia Farrow, among many others.
First published in 1937 and written during one of her many trips to Egypt with Max Mallowan in the first years after their marriage, Death on the Nile is one of her very finest, and most popular, stories. She herself was to say later, ‘I think myself that the book is one of the best of my “foreign travel” ones. I think the central situation is intriguing and has dramatic possibilities, and the three characters, Simon, Linnet, and Jacqueline, seem to me to be real and alive.’ In the eight decades that have passed since then, I doubt anyone would disagree.
Mind you, our new version may have startled Dame Agatha just a little, as it opens with a young couple making love, not something ever found in one of her novels – no matter how much that possibility might have been implied. It tells the story of a spoiled, unlikeable, rich young socialite, Linnet Ridgeway, who steals the handsome but broke Simon Doyle from her best friend Jacqueline de Bellefort, and then marries him. The couple go to Egypt for their honeymoon, only to be followed there by Jacqueline, but when they try to escape on a cruise down the Nile by boat, she follows them again. It is on the steamer that Linnet is killed and the mystery begins.
The other passengers on the cruise are among some of Dame Agatha’s finest characters, including an American grande dame and her mousy companion, a lady novelist and her daughter, a fierce young socialist (who turns out to be an English peer), Linnet’s shady American attorney, and a senior officer in the British Secret Service, Colonel Race, who arrives, in our version, riding a camel out of the desert, in a suitably mysterious manner.
While no match for Ustinov’s cast, ours boasted some exceptional actors, including James Fox, brother of Edward, whom I had just played alongside in The Hollow, as Colonel Race. There was also the English actress Frances de la Tour, the American David Soul, best known for his role in the television series Starsky and Hutch, and the beautiful Emily Blunt as Linnet. Our new version, which we finished in the early autumn of 2003, is one of my favourites of all my Poirots. I remember the experiences as though they were yesterday, and I am very proud of it indeed.
One memory that sticks in my mind, however, is that every single member of the cast and crew were struck down at some point during the shoot with a rather severe stomach upset – everyone, that is, except Sheila and me. Sheila had come on the trip with me, as the children were no longer even teenagers. Perhaps our good health had something to do with the fact that we never ate anything that had not been cooked, not even salad or fruit, throughout our time there. But I did not escape entirely. No sooner had I finished filming and flown back to London, than I was struck with the worst form of ‘Montezuma’s revenge’. Unwisely, after my abstinence, I had eaten some fresh fruit salad on the plane, and that had taken its toll. Thankfully, it was my only bad memory of the shoot.
Death on the Nile also gave me an opportunity to deepen my portrait of Poirot, and underline his particular sense of vulnerability and loneliness. There is one scene, in particular, where he is standing at the stern of the steamer, looking into the falling dusk. I believe that it conveys something of the sadness and loneliness that Poirot feels because he has never had a domestic life, nor had ever been able to love a woman with such intensity.
Looking back, I think these four films were one of the turning points in the years of Poirot and me, for somehow they helped us to grow even closer, with me as his protector and guardian, and he relishing the chance to reveal more and more of himself to the watching audience. They were very important to both of us.
There is one other rather remarkable thing that occurred to me as we finished shooting that tenth series, and it is this. At home in Pinner, I discovered a picture of my grandfather on my father’s side, who was always known as the best-dressed man in Cape Town, in South Africa, where he lived. Taken in about 1895, he is dressed in a brimmed hat, a three-piece suit, and he is carrying a cane. It is uncanny – you really would think it was Poirot.
Chapter 15
‘EASILY THE WORST BOOK I EVER WROTE’
The British critics certainly seemed to like the new-style Poirot, and, true to their word, ITV made a considerable splash with the four new films, not least by broadcasting the first two in the peak viewing days of December: Five Little Pigs went out on Sunday, 14 December 2003, and Sad Cypress on Boxing Day Sunday 2003 at the prime time of nine in the evening.
The critics noticed at once that the whole series had been renewed in a very particular way. Peter Paterson captured it exactly, in the Daily Mail, when he commented, ‘This first of a new series of four Poirot stories was slick and expensive enough to quieten those who think that ITV has been performing under par for far too long,’ and he described Five Little Pigs as ‘entertaining and classy’. It was a view that Sheila and I shared, as she was particularly impressed by it when we watched it together on that Sunday evening.
In The Times, Paul Hoggart was equally complimentary, and he too had caught on to the stronger production values, commenting on the strong cast and ‘the intriguingly edgy quality of Kevin Elyot’s script. It was visually adventurous too.’
In the Daily Express, Robert Gore-Langton added, ‘The thing with Poirot is you can watch it with the whole family and have a sweepstake on whodunit’ and wen
t on to give me ‘a lot of credit’ for the show’s success – kindly adding that I was ‘perfect’ as the detective.
Sad Cypress was every bit as well received, though I felt personally that it was not quite appropriate viewing for Boxing Day. It is a fine story, but it is also hardly a festive Christmas television treat. I worried that this might affect the audience’s enjoyment, but I was in no position to do anything about the scheduling, as that was a matter for ITV. In the end, the viewing figures were very good indeed, and so I clearly need not have been concerned.
The network then gave our new version of Death on the Nile every bit as glamorous a scheduling, screening it on Easter Monday, 12 April 2004, again at nine in the evening. The Daily Mail called it ‘Murder most pleasing’, with Peter Paterson praising its ‘excellent cast’ and concluding that he thoroughly enjoyed ‘this skittish production which half-guyed the Christie formula while remaining faithful to it’.
By coincidence, another British broadcaster, Channel 4, had screened the Ustinov version on the Saturday evening before ours went out on the Monday, and this caught the eye of some of the reviewers. Charlie Catchpole, in the Daily Express, pointed out the contrast, saying that while Channel 4 had ‘wheeled out the 1978 film of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit for what seemed like the one hundredth time’, ours – by comparison – was a ‘sumptuous treat, which made the movie look stagey and laborious’.
To underline the three main production companies’ confidence in Death on the Nile, they had arranged a special screening of the film at the Marché International des Films et des Programmes Pour la Télévision festival (always known as MIP in the trade) in Cannes the month after its British broadcast at Easter. The aim was to introduce the new-style Poirot to television buyers around the world, and there were very good reasons to do so.
By then, the Poirot series had sold to eighty-three countries around the world, and had been one of the bestselling British programmes internationally for nearly a decade. Granada International, which was responsible for selling the film to other countries, seized the opportunity to demonstrate to 4,000 television buyers exactly how what was now known as Agatha Christie: Poirot had improved, and become a television event in the process. I was only too happy to go along to support them in doing so.
The Hollow, the final film of the new series of four, was given just as good a send-off by ITV, being broadcast on Bank Holiday Monday, 30 August 2004, at nine in the evening. Yet, in spite of the excellent cast, the reviews were less overwhelming. The Times commented rather sadly, ‘Poirot is becoming like a game of charades after dinner – you’re either in the mood or you just can’t be bothered to play along,’ while James Watson, in the Daily Telegraph, added, ‘Unfortunately, for all the fun along the way, nobody involved could disguise the obvious flaw: that, as Christie plots go, yesterday’s was rather routine.’
That was not the view of the film’s actors, however. After the filming, both Sarah Miles and Edward Fox wrote to me to say how much they had enjoyed making The Hollow. I was very touched, just as I was proud of the film.
But the critics’ muted reaction did nothing to stem the enthusiasm for the programmes around the world, as the new series sold even more successfully than its predecessors. Suddenly everyone involved with Poirot seemed rejuvenated, and ITV rapidly decided to make another four films, which we shot during 2005.
The success of the first of the new-style series had reinvigorated me too. It now seemed possible, if not entirely certain, that I might actually be able to play in all of Dame Agatha’s Poirot stories, as I had wanted for so long. I told one interviewer at the time that I would like to do it before I reached the age of sixty-five, which would be in 2011. I did not know then that it would take a couple more years before I would finally make my dream come true.
The first of the second series of Poirot under the new production team was The Mystery of the Blue Train, another of Dame Agatha’s great set-piece mysteries, although she herself did not care for it, calling it ‘easily the worst book I ever wrote’, in a newspaper interview in 1966, and adding, ‘I hate it.’ She was being far too hard on herself and her story.
There can be no denying, however, that Dame Agatha wrote it during one of the least happy periods of her life, when she was on holiday with her daughter Rosalind in February 1927 on the Canary Islands – and that may well have coloured her opinion of her story. She was writing it in the wake of her separation from Archie and her eleven-day disappearance. Heartache must have taken its toll on her attitude. What is certain is that she did not enjoy writing it for one moment, and only did so because she had an obligation to her publisher.
But it marked a turning point in her career. As she was to explain many years later in her autobiography, ‘That was the moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.’ In fact, the book was to sell 7,000 copies in hardback in its first edition in Britain, doing just as well as her previous book had done. It was published in March 1928 in Britain, and later that same year in the United States.
The following month, Dame Agatha was granted a divorce, and almost immediately afterwards Archie married long-term mistress Nancy Neele. The two were to remain married until 1958, when Nancy died of cancer, and Archie himself died just four years later. In the wake of her divorce, Dame Agatha wanted to stop using her husband’s name for her books, but her publishers in both Britain and the United States were firmly against any change, as she was already so well established. As a result, she remained Agatha Christie to her readers for the rest of her life.
For our new version of The Mystery of the Blue Train, Guy Andrews, the screenwriter, took a number of liberties with the details of Dame Agatha’s original story, not least in adding characters that were never there in the first place, to expand the story, and moving it from the 1920s to the 1930s. Hettie Macdonald, who was new to the series, took charge of the project, to bring it a sharper, more contemporary feel.
Once again, there was to be no Hastings, Japp or Miss Lemon, but the producers gave me a spectacular cast, including Lindsay Duncan, Roger Lloyd-Pack and Nicholas Farrell from Britain, as well as a real movie star, Elliott Gould, from the United States. I was thrilled to have Elliott with us, and I discovered later that he had been dying to be in a Poirot and was delighted to be asked. The cast was so good that I had to pinch myself. Here I was, appearing with an iconic movie star, a man who was a cult in Hollywood, in a Poirot. What’s more, he seemed to be enjoying himself hugely.
We filmed in Menton in the south of France, which stood in for Nice, the train’s destination, as well as on a set at Shepperton in England, which was built to the precise dimensions of the train itself, so that we could feel the claustrophobia of the carriages and the corridors. But for the exteriors of the train, we spent some time in Peterborough in England, which had some of the original carriages from the Blue Train itself, though it didn’t have quite the climate of the Côte d’Azur.
In spite of Dame Agatha’s dislike for the story, our version certainly remains one of my favourites. It is a little dark, but it nevertheless contains some wonderful performances, not just by Elliott Gould, but also by Lindsay Duncan and British actor Trevor Eve’s talented daughter Alice. There was also a haunting musical score by Stephen McKeon to add to the atmosphere. It is one of the films I look back on today with real pleasure.
The second in the new series that we filmed in 2005 was After the Funeral, which had been published in the British Coronation year of 1953, and the following year in the United States – where it was called Funerals Are Fatal. It is another of Dame Agatha’s portraits of a dysfunctional family, where everyone seems to be at each other’s throats. Indeed, in this story, the relationships between the family members are so complicated that Dame Agatha thought it wise to include a complete family tree in her book, to help the reader
sort out exactly who was who.
Once again, Poirot is acting alone, called in to investigate a change to the will of the wealthy Richard Abernethie, whose surviving sister remarks to her relatives at the official reading of the will, ‘But he was murdered, wasn’t he?’ Until then, it had been assumed by everyone that he had died of natural causes. The family solicitor calls Poirot.
And, once again, the cast was wonderful. Geraldine James, who had played my character’s wife in Blott on the Landscape and had also done the ITV thriller Seesaw with me, Anna Calder-Marshall, Anthony Valentine, and – perhaps the most exciting of all – a young Michael Fassbender, who was to go on to have a tremendous career in Hollywood as one of the new generation of dashing leading men, in films like Inglourious Basterds and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Michael had also appeared with me in the BBC crime drama NCS.
Once again, there were a number of substantial changes from Dame Agatha’s original story, and our new screenwriter, Philomena McDonagh, also took some trouble to delve even deeper into Poirot’s psyche, giving me a line of dialogue which reveals his intense sense of loneliness, which we had gradually been revealing in the last series. She has Poirot say, ‘The journey of life, it can be hard for those who travel alone.’
Mind you, in the original book, Dame Agatha also reveals a little more of Poirot’s complex character when she has him say, ‘Women are never kind, though they can sometimes be tender.’ That is not the remark of a misogynist, but rather the view of a man who does not experience sexual attraction. Poirot, for me, was never in the least interested in sex, although he could recognise the symptoms of desire in others. He was sceptical about romance, with the exception, perhaps, of Countess Rossakoff and Virginie Mesnard, and a touch sentimental when it came to motherly affection, but from the waist down, he did not really exist. His life remained firmly based on his logic and his ‘little grey cells’, which brought him his unique powers of deduction and his acute perception of character in other people.