1. The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

Air date: 08/01/1989
Published: Second story in "Poirot's Early Cases" (1974)

January 8th, 1989: It seems a lifetime ago. It's amazing to think how different our 'modern' world was back then. No computers (at least not as we know them today!), no mobile-phones, no Internet. But there was Poirot...

That was the Sunday evening when what was to become a veritable TV institution began: David Suchet's iconic depiction of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot first hit our screens.

All the episodes in the first series were one-hour adaptations of Poirot short stories. I've no idea what made the producers choose the episodes in the order they did, but this was the one they began with.

The Adventure of the Clapham Cook is not, in my opinion, one of the strongest stories. But the amusing way in which Poirot takes on what at first seems such a trivial case does, at least, provide an interesting way of introducing the character. We first see Poirot when Hastings is reading cases to him from the newspaper. There is a lovely camera 'pan' up from the ground as we see first his shoes and the camera moves up his immaculate attire to his face. David Suchet makes reference to this shot in his recently published book, "Poirot and Me".

"Poirot's Early Cases" (rather like "Poirot Investigates", Agatha Christie's first set of short stories, published 50 years earlier) often has Hastings narrating. In the book he and Poirot are sharing a flat and have a landlady. The TV producers departed from this as the decision was made to set all the Poirot stories in the 1930s, when Poirot is rather more established as a private detective. So in the TV version he is already in Whitehaven Mansions. Oh, and Miss Lemon is also in his employ.

Nevertheless, the TV production is remarkably faithful to the short story (I remember this was one of the things that was emphasised in the publicity that preceded the series being launched). The main difference is in the ending. The original story ends with Poirot explaining to Hastings how and why the culprit did it. In the TV production this is played out at greater length with his explanation (on board a train back to London) then followed by an arrest of the culprit at Southampton docks as he tries to flee to South America by boat. But, then again, a story that takes less than half-an-hour to read has to be fleshed out in some way to fill an hour's TV time.

The other stylistic point of note is that the TV adaptation begins with the culprit sealing up the trunk (that we eventually discover contains a dead body). Although his face is seen only briefly, this does rather tend to give the game away. But Agatha Christie's Poirot was up and running. And so, now, are we.