Interlude: "Poirot and Me"

Two more chapters in David Suchet's book cover the filming of series two. The same schedule was followed, filming beginning in the summer for a series that would be broadcast from early January.

Suchet points out that the producers wanted to introduce a little more humour in the series, and both Hastings and Japp were made to appear "a little less stiff".

There is a touching admiration in Suchet's description of the character of Poirot. "I believe that if you listen well, you are a sympathetic person", he writes - which would be a good maxim for all of us to adopt! This, he argues, is something Agatha Christie wrote into the character of Poirot. "He is not Sherlock Holmes, dismissively lecturing a policeman or a wealthy landowner about their foolishness. Poirot cares about people too much for that. He sympathises with them, and shows that he does so, in story after story."

He shares his disappointment that three of the episodes in series two, Double Sin, The Adventure of the Cheap Flat, and The Adventure of the Western Star, appeared to him "a little flat".

Chapter seven is given over entirely to The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which brought series two to an end. The broadcasting of the episode was deliberately delayed by six months so that it could coincide with the centenary of Agatha Christie's birth in the September of that year (1990). We hear something of Agatha Christie's own background, including her wartime work in a dispensary, which gave her valuable insight into poisons - a knowledge she makes frequent use of in her books.