1985 audio adaptation of Christie's 1928 mystery, in six half-hour
episodes. The heiress was murdered on the train on which her estranged
husband was also travelling; of course her jewels were missing, and
everyone suspects her parasite of a lover. Poirot, equally of course,
is not so sure.
This is to my mind one of Christie's weaker novels, even though
it's a reworking of an earlier short story, and seems like an odd
choice for the first of the BBC's audio adaptations of the Poirot
books. (An opening scene with some very dodgy accents… is sadly in
keeping with the thrillery style of the original, and the jumping
around in location follows it too.) All the key points are here, and
Michael Bakewell even retains the somewhat fiddly romantic subplots,
but as an audio drama I think it indulges too much in its own
complications.
Maurice Denham does a self-indulgent job as Poirot, hamming up the
accent, and since there's no particular chain of reasoning for him to
follow he often lapses into pomposity. Jane Leonard and Ronald Herdman
continue the overdone accents as a Greek fence and his daughter. And
of course a reformed rake is about as unconvincing here as he is in
the book.
On the other hand the rest of the cast is solid, particularly Moir
Leslie in the minor role of Lenox; they don't overdo the acting to the
detriment of telling the story. Sound effects are used with a light
touch. It's just a pity that this cast and crew couldn't have had a
better basis for their first outing.
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