2005 audio adaptation of Christie's 1920 mystery, in 5 half-hour
episodes. Captain Hastings, home on leave from the front, is staying
with friends at Styles Court when the elderly owner dies suddenly. He
enlists his old friend Hercule Poirot to help investigate.
Simon Williams narrates as Hastings, and does a good job of
balancing being interested (and interesting) with remaining
necessarily oblivious to the meaning of clues. (It's too easy, I feel,
for the Watson-figure to degenerate into comic relief when they have
to be acted by a human rather than simply serve as a narrator in
text.) Meanwhile John Moffatt, twenty years experienced playing Poirot
by this point, comes over as perversely insufferable and pompous; yes,
that's a thing which Poirot tends to be, but I think he must also be a
little sympathetic or the whole affair risks becoming losing its
point.
The cast in general is good, necessarily large given the constraints
of the story; fans of The Archers may note Annabelle Dowler in two
small roles, both of them significantly more lively than she's allowed
to be in that other programme. Most of the red herrings from the novel
remain in the adaptation, so things have to move along at a brisk
pace.
In spite of some minor problems, I'd call this one of the better of
the (relatively few) BBC Christie adaptations I've heard.
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