RogerBW's Blog

Five Little Pigs 30 March 2022

1994 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1942 mystery, in a single 90-minute episode. Amyas Crale's widow went to prison for poisoning him, and died there; now their daughter plans to marry, but worries about the possibility of a hereditary murderousness, and asks Poirot to investigate.

Digging up a past murder as a fictional frame is always frustrating: the wrong person has already been punished, and in this case getting the right person punished may well never happen. The implicit promise that justice will be done, whether by law or "natural justice", underpins the murder mystery, and when it's broken the thing feels incomplete.

Bakewell doesn't try to fix this minor problem, and makes only small rearrangements to the plot: for example we close with Poirot telling Carla about his plan to seek a posthumous pardon rather than Elsa walking away, but it's only a slight shift of mood. John Moffatt as Poirot effectively supplies narration, but sometimes seems to be treating the case more as an academic exercise than as a matter of wrongdoing, and his is the only voice that carries all the way through

With an adaptation like this which doesn't do anything remarkable in itself, any flaws in the original are highlighted; this is one I'd like to hand to Joy Wilkinson to see how she'd pep it up.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1