For Agatha Christie fans, there will probably never be a Hercule Poirot greater than David Suchet, whose meticulous (and marvelously mustached) embodiment of the famed detective on PBS’s Poirot remains the high water mark against which all others—including Peter Ustinov, Albert Finney, Alfred Molina, Ian Holm and, most recently, Kenneth Branagh in 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express—must be judged. To that end, John Malkovich’s version of the character in Amazon’s new three-part miniseries The ABC Murders (premiering Feb. 1) will not be remembered as the finest in the sleuth’s long and illustrious history. But thanks to this engaging—and slyly timely—adaptation of Christie’s 1936 novel, it ably earns first-runner-up status.
Having originally aired on the BBC last December, The ABC Murders is the latest small-screen Christie affair penned by Sarah Phelps, previously responsible for 2015’s sturdy And Then There Were None and last year’s over-the-top Ordeal by Innocence. Here, she hews closely to her source material when it comes to basic plot mechanics, but fleshes out her drama by concocting a backstory for Poirot that doubles as the show’s second mystery. Via repeated flashbacks to a shattering incident in his native Belgium shortly before he arrived on English shores, Phelps’ saga casts Poirot’s true identity as a secret to be uncovered. Along the way, it posits him as an immigrant refugee navigating a 1930s Britain where a Brexit-style nationalist (and xenophobic) movement is afoot.
No matter that he’s resided in England for two decades, Poirot finds himself an outsider whose lies about his past as a Belgian police officer have gotten retired Inspector Japp (Kevin McNally) in hot water, as well as angered Japp’s replacement, Inspector Crome (Rupert Grint). Compounding matters is that Malkovich’s aged Poirot is widely viewed as a has-been whose time in the celebrity spotlight has come and gone. Crome and his law enforcement cronies still resent the icon for spending years making them look like “fools,” and Poirot himself has been shaken by his fall from grace, going so far as to dye his gray goatee in a vain effort to assert his vitality. Poirot’s arrogance, of course, remains. Yet in Malkovich’s skillful hands, the detective is a more detached and interior genius, destabilized by his shaky professional standing and, also, by the long-ago catastrophe that made him who he is today.
ADVERTISEMENT
While social alienation and buried trauma have rattled the once-unflappable detective, his latest case brings out the best in him. Poirot begins receiving letters from a killer who goes by “ABC” and taunts him about forthcoming crimes while boasting, “I have never been loved. But I will be feared. I will be a faceless beast, leading lambs to the slaughter.” Crome is loath to heed Poirot’s warnings, but after police ignore a missive stating that the first slaying will occur in Andover, Poirot goes snooping around on his own. There, he discovers the body of Alice Asher (Tamzin Griffin), murdered with her brand-new stockings. When, shortly thereafter, another letter is followed by the slaying of Bexhill’s Betty Barnard (Eve Austin)—a tart who had callously stolen, and then discarded, her sister’s most promising marital prospect—the alliterative pattern is set.
From smudgy close-ups of a typewriter banging out the killer’s correspondences, to scenes set in darkened rooms and shadowy streets, director Alex Gabassi drenches The ABC Murders in so much doomy gloom that he somewhat stifles the action. Often, the series seems to be trying a bit too hard to amplify its suspense through overcast aesthetics. Malkovich, however, offsets those missteps by locating the quiet anguish driving Poirot forward in his investigation. Unlike, say, the cartoonish flamboyance of Branagh’s take on the character (all preening arrogance and farcical facial hair), Malkovich's Poirot searches for order—in life and in crime—with quiet reserve. He’s a man who’s learned hard lessons about being too showy, as we see he once was in a flashback to a birthday celebration where he hosted a “murder party” game of whodunit.
As for who’s done these dirty deeds, The ABC Murders lets us know right away—it’s Alexander Bonaparte Cust (Eamon Farren), an epileptic stockings salesman who sets up shop in a tiny flat where he strikes up an S&M-related relationship with Lily (Anya Chalotra), the daughter of his nasty landlady (Shirley Henderson). Consequently, for most of its runtime, the series is consumed with how Poirot will identify the fiend, as well as why the madman has such a hang-up with the detective. One thing is clear from the early going: the killer is intimately acquainted with Poirot, given that each homicide is perpetrated in a town the investigator has visited. Moreover, the third victim, Sir Carmichael Clarke (Christopher Villiers) of Churston, is the man who hosted the aforementioned “murder party” for his wife, Lady Hermione Clarke (Tara Fitzgerald), who suspected her spouse of cheating with his secretary Thora Grey (Freya Mavor), and who’s now gravely ill and cared for by her brother-in-law Franklin (Andrew Buchan).
The ABC Murders is a cat-and-mouse game between Poirot and Cust—until, that is, it’s not. It should come as no shock to hear that there are surprises in store for those who make it to the miniseries’ third and final hour. As is always the case with Poirot, the pleasure comes not from the question of whether or not he’ll figure things out by the time the credits roll, but the intellectually inventive way in which he’ll interpret clues to piece together the truth. On that count, the show consistently delivers. The fact that it also provides us with a reasonable origin story for Poirot—one that speaks to his faith in reason more than religion, to his underlying motivation for pursuing justice for victims of “murderers,” and to the wrongheadedness of isolationist intolerance—is only icing on the cake.
Which is to say, it’s an update that doesn’t tinker with the nuts and bolts of Christie’s beloved tale, but adds just enough contemporary flavor—and psychoanalytic heft—to shake the cobwebs off of it. At three hours, it’s a binge-friendly affair whose economy and sharpness would make the late, best-selling author proud.
Join The Binge, our Facebook group for streaming superfans.
