The other is that the ITV series opted to smooth out the chronology of the novels and short stories – which were published over a period of 55 years – by locating most of the stories in circa 1936, although we have reached the later 30s for the final lot: tonight's The Big Four is set during the runup to the second world war. One is that Christie, who became sick of her creation, did not allow the Belgian detective much space to change during her long immersion in his personality.

In trying to maintain both his and the audience's interest through well over 100 hours of playing Poirot, Suchet faced two problems. Peter Falk's Columbo was essentially the same from pilot to finale both because viewers are assumed to take comfort in familiarity and also, Garnett argues, so that the shows could be screened out of order on syndication channels. The great TV producer Tony Garnett ( Cathy Come Home, Cardiac Arrest, Between the Lines, This Life) has argued that the historical weakness of much TV drama has been the lack of character development. He has been able to fit between the mysteries several major stage productions – such as The Merchant of Venice and Long Day's Journey into Night – and other TV appearances, including the lead role in a bio-drama about the ruined tycoon Robert Maxwell and another scandalous financier, Melmotte, in an adaptation of Trollope's The Way We Live Now.īut what has been most impressive about this Christie marathon is not just that he has done other work away from Poirot but that he has continued to do different things in Poirot. Suchet's versatility as an actor – and his careful spacing of the Poirots to average fewer than three a year – has prevented his becoming trapped by the character. Although it is common in music for a pianist to play, for example, a complete Beethoven cycle, and Simon Ruselll Beale has performed in radio dramatisations of all John Le Carre's George Smiley books, such completism is almost impossible in television because of the level of commitment required from both performers – who understandably fear typecasting – and network executives, who are prone to changes of mind and fashion: ITV is unrecognisable in personnel and structure from when the first Poirot was shown almost quarter of a century ago.

Poirot final curtain