18. The Kidnapped Prime Minister

Air date: 18/02/1990
Published: Eighth story in "Poirot Investigates" (1924)

The next episode in Agatha Christie's Poirot provides a wonderful platform for our sleuth's "little grey cells".

As the title suggests, the story revolves around the kidnapping of the British Prime Minister, the day before he is due to deliver a crucial speech at a European peace conference. Poirot is called in - on the recommendation of the police - but spends most of the episode exasperating the authorities by thinking rather than acting!

The PM was supposedly kidnapped in France. The car that collected him on arrival is found abandoned, and his private secretary, Daniels, is left bound and gagged. The incident took place the day after a botched attempt was made on his life in the UK.

Poirot eventually deduces that the PM never left England. The botched shooting attempt was rigged so that a heavily bandaged 'double' could make the sea voyage to France before disappearing. Daniels was, of course, involved in the plot.

The TV adaptation is faithful to the general flow of the short story. In the original Poirot actually travels to France before realising he needs to be back in the UK. In the TV version his little grey cells (and propensity to suffer sea-sickness!) bring him to this conclusion even earlier!

Daniels' wife plays a bigger role in the TV version, allowing the writers to include yet another car chase scene (Hastings attempting to follow her after Poirot has flushed her out). Poirot waits by the phone in his flat, which justifies Miss Lemon making an appearance (she is not in the original). Japp appears briefly in the original, but has his usual beefed-up role on TV, and spends most of the episode fretting over Poirot's methods - as he was the one who recommended Poirot to the government!

The biggest change for TV, however, is provided by the kidnappers. In the original they are, in a rather vague way, German sympathisers, and the PM is eventually discovered at the home of one Frau Bertha Ebenthal. For TV Daniels, his wife and the bogus UK car driver are all pro-Irish activists (the chant Eirinn go bragh - Ireland forever - features) and the PM is found, in a final stand-off, at the ancestral home of Mrs Daniels.