RogerBW's Blog

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe 08 May 2022

2004 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1940 mystery, in five 30-minute episodes. Poirot leaves his dentist, passing a lady who loses the buckle of her shoe while getting out of a taxi. Later, it turns out that the dentist is dead. Suicide? Of course not.

Yes, all right, the story is a bit forced to fit the nursery rhyme, but this is a reasonably solid Christie, the first one in which she allowed the gloom of the early days of the war to be reflected in the book. All right, her politics were not sophisticated, but nor were many other people's, and she does resist the urge to propaganda.

As an audio production, it's the usual workmanlike Bakewell job, not quite a direct translation but pretty close. John Moffatt can do the Poirot Voice in his sleep, and sometimes seems to be. Philip Jackson makes a creditable Chief Inspector Japp, but this isn't really a story of interesting characters, and the rest of the cast don't have much to work with.

On the other hand, even if they don't get a chance to shine, the direction (by Enyd Williams as usual) is solid, and there's even something of a sense of place in the ambient noises. Not one to love, I think, but a reasonable version in this format.

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