Cheap Poirot - Complete Collection (DVD) (David Suchet) Price

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Customer Reviews of Poirot - Complete Collection

There is great television being made today and I found these adaptations less than great. I felt the acting in most of them bland and uninteresting to down right bad. The thing I love about the novels is the clear build of tension towards the unmasking of the killer or killers. In these teleplays I thought the tension was lacking so there was no great pay off at the end which is the main satisfaction of reading the novels. In other words the directing too, was bland. I felt also that the scripts were confusing and not so neatly thought through as Dame Agatha's novels. If you have seen the movies 'Murder on the Orient Express' 'Death on the Nile' 'Evil under the Sun' then you will get an idea of great payoffs and all lose ends neatly tied up at the end which is the point of all Agatha Christie murder mysteries. I feel Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney came closer to capturing the essense of Hercule Poirot than David Suchet has. These movie length teleplays did nothing to satisfy this Agatha Christie fan because of their lack of tension, blandness and mediocre adaptations to the small screen.

U.S. editing has botched this series
I recommend that you stay away from this set. American green eye shades from A&E's advertizing department cut ten-twelve minutes from each episode so that they could squeeze more fast food ads in to the showings on television. The resulting botch makes several of these episodes unwatchable. Sorry; hopefully Acorn will put these out in pristine form.

Great stories - shame about the U.S. editing
David Suchet as Poirot is always a delight to watch, and I would love to recommend this DVD collection... but there is one major problem, at least as far as I am concerned. These versions were issued in the US and, I suspect, because of the ruthless hacking to accommodate commercials, these stories are each about 10 minutes shorter than the original U.K. versions. This is particularly damaging to Evil Under The Sun: In the edited-down version, characters inexplicably crop up and disappear and threads are left hanging. There is also a tendency to edit out scenes which are intended to exploit Poirot's little eccentricities which make the character so appealing. In the full version it all makes sense, with events unfolding as the director intended, rather than according to the dictates of the hacks who subsequently cannibalized it! If this irritates you even half as much as it assuredly does me, you might want to consider getting a region-free DVD player or a multi-format VCR (because this doesn't only happen with Poirot, but ALL films which cross the Atlantic), and then ordering British-made movies from amazon.co.uk, or any other reputable British supplier - it will be well worth the trouble.