Will the real Poirot stand up?

I have now seen all the re-runs of Series one of Poirot.

Hugh Fraser plays the dim, bespoke Captain Hastings, Philip Jackman Inspector Japp with trademark flapping raincoat as brilliantly caricatured by Stephen Fry in Gosforth Park and Pauline Moran the bossy secretary Miss Lemon.

The second series, which I record as it is broadcast in the early  hours, is longer and more faithful to the original crime novels. Both have the incomparable David Suchet as Hercule Poirot.

I was particularly interested to compare the TV version of Murder on the Orient Express to the screen one.

The film was directed by Sidney Lumet who featured as one of the Directors in the SKY ARTS series that our Neil Rosen admires so much.

Neil believes that Lumet’s first film Twelve Angry Men was his best and, as there are twelve suspects in the carriage of the Orient Express, that might explain the choice.

Lumet insisted on an all-star cast on the grounds that the murderer was likely to be guessed as the biggest star.

Hard to choose when Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud and Willem Defoe are in the cast. Albert Finney was cast as Poirot and in my opinion fell short of David Suchet.

Suchet  is so mannered, so fastidious in his dress, so perfect in his accent that he is inside the skin of Poirot.

The TV version was not short of stars with Hugh Bonneville, James Fox, Barbara Hershey and Dame Eileen Atkins.

I have not seen the Kenneth Branagh 2017 version but by the sound of the reviews he has not toppled Poirot either.

John Malkovich had a go.

His Poirot was a victim of racial abuse.

It did not work but the ingenuity of the book The ABC Murders saved the production.