The first episode of Poirot received a “U” certificate. The level of violence in the film is surprising. They also make it clear to the audience that this instalment of Poirot isn’t going to be a warm and cosy hot chocolate affair. Neither of these occur in the original text, but they set the stage for a discussion about what justice is right, and what is savagery. Right from the outset there is a series of shocking scenes first a rather bloody suicide of an army officer, followed by the sight of an adulterous woman being stoned to death in the streets of Istanbul. Lumet’s version was a jolly murder mystery, and spiffing good fun. Other adaptations of the novel, the most famous being the Oscar winning Sidney Lumet film starring Albert Finney as Poirot, had gone for a more glamorous, warmer feel. The new edge to the story comes largely from the change of tone. They employed BAFTA winner Philip Martin to direct, and screenwriter Stuart Harcourt (who had penned some of the company’s Miss Marple films) to craft a film that did justice to Christie’s original text while adding a new edge to it. The rights had been held back until 2008 (after a rather disastrous modern-day version upset the right-holders), but when ITV were given the go-ahead they treated the project with care. I am very glad Murder on the Orient Express was adapted later rather than earlier.

But from 2003 onwards the stories got darker, there were less jokes and a wider variety of directors were brought in to add their stamp to the series. Longer works by Christie were adapted for the series in the past, some of them very well ( The Mysterious Affair At Styles (1990) was the first, and a personal favourite of mine), but they all felt very televisual and kept rather too strictly to a series format.

They concentrated only on full-length novels, rather than short stories. In 2003, the production team behind the films took them in a new direction. The series started life on ITV in 1989 with short, light, 50-minute episodes, adapted from Christie’s numerous short stories, with the wonderful David Suchet perfectly capturing the little Belgian detective’s mannerisms and eccentricities. I am referring to it as a film (because that is what it is, regardless what size screen it is viewed on), but it also a television episode an instalment of ITV’s long-running series Agatha Christie’s Poirot. This is what it was like for me when I first watched director Philip Martin’s utterly brilliant reimagining of one of Agatha Christie’s most famous stories – Murder on the Orient Express. They creep up on you, seemingly out of nowhere, and defy any expectations you originally had.

Murder on the orient express suchet