"Agatha Christie: Poirot" Sad Cypress (2003)

Director:

Dave Moore

Writers:

Agatha Christie (novel)
David Pirie (screenplay)

TV Series:

"Agatha Christie: Poirot" (1989)

Original Air Date:

26 December 2003 (Season 9, Episode 2)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Crime | Thriller

Plot:

Elinor Carlisle seems to be the obvious murderer of her ailing aunt and the beautiful romantic rival who broke up her engagement, but Poirot uncovers darker motives.

Plot Keywords:

Aunt | Sandwich | Salmon | Doctor | Hercule Poirot

Cast

David Suchet	...	Hercule Poirot
Elisabeth Dermot Walsh	...	Elinor Carlisle
Rupert Penry-Jones	...	Roddy Winter
Kelly Reilly	...	Mary Gerrard
Paul McGann	...	Dr. Peter Lord
Phyllis Logan	...	Nurse Hopkins
Marion O'Dwyer	...	Nurse O'Brien
Diana Quick	...	Mrs. Welman
Stuart Laing	...	Ted Horlick
Jack Galloway	...	Marsden
Geoffrey Beevers	...	Seddon
Alistair Findlay	...	Prosecuting Counsel
Linda Spurrier	...	Mrs. Bishop
Ian Taylor	...	Shopkeeper
Timothy Carlton	...	Judge

Runtime:

Finland:94 min | USA:100 min (DVD)

Country:

UK

Language:

Italian | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Dorney Court, Dorney, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

London Weekend Television (LWT)

Trivia:

The title refers to lines from William Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night": "Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid."

Goofs:

Factual errors: The paper boy at the newsstand announces "Gershwin dies!" Poirot opens the newspaper, which features the obituary of famed American composer George Gershwin. On the opposite page is the obituary of Laura Welman, and the date on the newspaper states that it is September 1937. George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937.

Quotes:

Hercule Poirot: I am, as you say, bored to the tears.

Egad

You know, some of these Poirot adaptations are palatable. And some are dreadful. This is one of the dreadful ones. I'll concede one thing: the casting is near perfect, considering the limits of TeeVee. The faces and bearing of the characters are apt, though Suchet bothers me more as his years in to role dragged on.

It had already been more than a decade by this one, and you can see that where Christie's character was playing with aggressive intelligence a character imagined in his home land, Suchet is merely copying motions he made before that were vaguely comic.

(Its part of the joke. Sherlock Holmes cared not a whit about how he looked or whether his mental feats were ever known. Indeed, in several stories he hides his accomplishments. But Poirot is obsessive about his appearance, his food and how he is perceived. He is motivated to solve crime not because of an inner conflict with evil, but in how he can best evil in order to advance in the battle against himself.) But what kills this is the script. It takes away the magic of the standard final confrontation where Poirot confronts all the suspects and explains how each of them "did" it, settling on one who really did. In that instant, we are supposed to see how all we have seen now makes sense.

But in this case it doesn't. Little of it makes sense. We don't discover why any of the characters acted as they did, and surely not the murderer. We don't know why the elevator went up and down mysteriously, nor why "sandwich paste" figures in at all.

Its the least complete of any I have seen. The whole room of viewers I was with had no idea what had happened after it was over. You need to avoid this one.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.