Poirot, unpacked

Jeez I had high hopes for “The ABC Murders”. It was one of my favorite Poirot stories and well John Malkovich is playing Poirot so it must be exciting right?

Nope!

All of Poirot’s backstories and mannerisms and character are removed. This is a Poirot TV show the way “Elementary” is a Sherlock Holmes TV show. You don’t really want to see it!

This Poirot has a goatee! *horror* No mustache, can you believe that! He starts off coloring his mustaches black, which I think the “real” Poirot too used to do… but this one has the colors dripping off his face. He is sad, a lost cause. Cops hate him, he has no purpose. There’s a lot of flashbacks to some mysterious and sad past… which turns out be even more disappointing as guess what this Poirot wasn’t even a celebrated Belgian cop! Jeez.

The murders and plot are faithful to the book but it’s not much fun to watch. Everything’s so sad and gloomy. Poirot doesn’t even use his “little gray cells” anywhere. The ABC killer is kind of given to him in his lap. And there’s no explanation given behind how he found the actual murdered either. Eugh!

Of course, watch it coz anyone would be curious to see it considering it’s Poirot. But don’t expect much. Maybe go listen to a Poirot audiobook to cleanse yourself after this! (After watching an episode of “Elementary” I went back and re-watched an episode of “Sherlock” just to forget “Elementary”).

I liked something Poirot says in the end. We have a tendency to characterize the current age as dark or more evil that the olden times. That’s not really true. There was a lot of cruelty in the past too. In fact I was reading a book “1000 years of annoying the French” and also recently I visited Tbilisi, Georgia and was reading about their history… there was a lot more war and violence in the past. There is a lot of it now too but saying that the present is worse than the past is just romanticizing the past. There’s always been evil in the world – it’s Humans. We are just bad and wicked. (And this is me channeling a lot of “Westworld” too into everything else! :)).

Speaking of TV shows checkout “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” if you get a a chance. Good stuff! Or if you want murder mysteries set in cold and lonely country check out “Shetland”. Excellent stuff!