winsfordtown

Has anybody know what year this series of 'Poirot' is supposed to depict? All the early episodes were set in the early to late thirties with an impending war referenced regularly. But after the two episodes broadcast the show in style bares little or no resemblence to the late forties or early fifties. It seems to me like the design as been cobbled together.

Gazza

I thought I heard one of the characters say 'we're in the midst of a depression' which suggests early thirties.

Freddy

Cat Among The Pigeons (Sunday's Episode) was written after WW2. I got the impression it was post WW2.

Listening to David Suchet on the radio a while back he said "that they were filming the HP books including his last case where he dies". This will be Curtain which was published in 1975, (though written 4 decades earlier) a year before Agatha Christie's death.

Thanks to Wicki for the above

FReddy

The world wags on.

winsfordtown

David Suchet is wearing a lot padding which I assumed was to make Poirot look a lot fatter through age and years of good living however the whole set design doesn't look post-war.

Dave B

"Cat among the Pigeons" was written about a decade after the end of WWII, so it made some kind of sense that Mrs Upjohn had been an Intelligence Officer during the conflict. The TV production seemed to be placed pre-War, which made the revelation that Mrs Upjohn had been a Secret Service agent less plausible.

The book, of course, doesn't introduce Poirot into the action until near the end - by which time murders had been committed and the police had asked all the questions. Shoe-horning Poirot in at the start of the TV show made him look somewhat unnecessary - with violence happening around him while he wandered around corridors, peeking in at the schoolgirls.

And how utterly laughable that the headmistress of a top boarding school would ask a visitor to help her choose her successor. Even more laughable that Poirot would agree!

image45

I thought it was always early 1930's butt he series has been going longer than 'Heart Beat' so you often wonder if it will stay in the sametime!

"Seya next time!"

Windthrop

Poirot was over 60 when he retired on the 20s so during the last new Poirot novel in the 70s he would have been well over 100. There are things which indicate the passing of time in the novels - TV sets, 60s drug culture etc but Poirot does not grow old. It is a problem thats crops up alot in long running series of crime novels - Wexford who is still going strong would be in his 90s now if the books were being accurate. Ian Rankin has aged Rebus during the novels but he is one of the rare ones. I think it could be argued with the TV series of Poirot that they have kept them in the 30s because essentially Christie was an interwar writer whose novels conjour up a world of deference and country house parties. Though her novels have as I have mentioned contain pointers to the passing of time she never really accepted changes in the social order. In this sense the TV ahve got it right I think and of course ageing Suchet from his 60s to his 100s might prove difficult.

Tommy and Tuppence aged in real time but then they were only in their 20s when they first appeared.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

winsfordtown

As ITV are only showing 'Poirot' sparodicaly they could easily moved the stories on a few years to cover any minor plot difficulties. At the moment according to ITV the war that was prophicised in the thirties is not going to happen.

CaptainWaggett

Surely it's as the programme to The Mousetrap rather charmingly says -
"Time - Agatha Christie Time"