Poirot: Series 5 Blu-ray delivers stunning video and decent audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
The fifth series of this television adaptation featuring Agatha Christie's brilliant Belgian detective contains the last set of one-hour episodes to air before the final season, currently being filmed for release in 2013.
The fifth series of Agatha Christie's Poirot was first broadcast in 1993, and it marked the
last time, until the upcoming Series 13, that the great detective would solve a case within the confines
of a single hour. For the next twenty years, often with long breaks between series, Poirot
would consist solely of feature films adapted from Christie's novels.
The eight episodes in Series 5 can be fairly said to represent the summation of everything the
original creative team had learned to date about constructing a one-hour TV drama from a
Christie short story. They sent Poirot to exotic locations (real and simulated), constructed lavish
sets, peopled them with multiple extras and staged extravagant sequences, including a debate at
Cambridge University, a South American military coup and a high-speed car chase on English
country roads. With a central character as strong as the Belgian master sleuth and a portrayal as
authoritative as David Suchet's, the writers and producers seem to have been emboldened to take
whatever creative chances struck their fancy. They could always count on Poirot to provide a
rock-solid foundation, with his nimble wits, impeccable manners and unshakeable self-confidence. No
matter how wild or complicated the story became, Poirot could sort through the
facts, make reassuring sense of everything and provide a satisfactory resolution just as the hour
ran out.
"The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb" concerns an Anglo-American archaeological expedition
to unearth the burial chamber of a King Tut-like pharoah. Immediately upon breaking the seal
and entering the tomb, a senior member of the team, Sir Guy Willard (Grant Thatcher), dies of an
apparent heart attack. Rumors of a "curse" sweep the press, and the scientist's wife, Lady Willard
(Anna Cropper), fears for the safety of her son, John (Peter Reeves), a junior archaeologist who
wants to take his father's place. Lady Willard asks Poirot to investigate, but he sees no crime to
solve. Then other members of the team begin to die under questionable circumstances. Poirot,
who does not believe in either curses or coincidence, summons the reliable Captain Hastings
(Hugh Fraser) and boards a plane for Cairo. Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) remains behind to do
essential research, although she is preoccupied with the recent passing of her beloved cat.
In "The Underdog", Sir Reuben Astwell (Denis Lill) is a successful industrialist who bullies
everyone around him: family, servants, employees. When he turns up clubbed to death in his
study, there is no shortage of suspects, but the focus quickly narrows to Astwell's nephew,
Charles (Jonathan Phillips), who'd been heard drunkenly berating his uncle the night before.
Poirot, who is staying at the Astwell estate, sees too many inconsistencies and can't help but
wonder about the valuable new formula for artificial rubber that Astwell's company was about to
introduce. The reliable Miss Lemon arrives from London to assist her boss in eliciting evidence
with her newly acquired skills in hypnosis.
"Yellow Iris" gives Poirot a second chance to solve a case he was unable to complete two years
earlier in Argentina, because a military coup resulted in his arrest and deportation. A lady named
Iris Russell (Robin McCaffrey) apparently committed suicide by poison during a party in her
honor at a restaurant called Les Jardins des Cygnes; her death occured before her horrified
husband, Barton Russell (David Troughton), and sister, Pauline (Geraldine Somerville). Now, the
owner of Les Jardins des Cygnes is reopening the restaurant in London, and Barton Russell is
reassembling the members of the dinner party there in an effort to prove that his wife's death
wasn't a suicide. Poirot will attend.
"The Case of the Missing Will" involves an old friend of Poirot, Andrew Marsh (Mark
Kingston), a distinguished Cambridge alumnus, who is wealthy, determinedly anti-feminist and,
as he confides to Poirot, ailing. Marsh further surprises Poirot by announcing his intention to
make a new will leaving everything to Violet Wilson (Beth Goddard), the young woman whose
care and education have been his responsibility since she was a young girl. But before Marsh can
do anything, he dies of massive heart failure under suspicious circumstancesand then his
existing will is found to have disappeared from his solicitor's office. Only Poirot can
decipher the web of deceit and evasion in which his late friend was entangled.
In "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman", Captain Hastings buys an Italian sports car, and
Miss Lemon acquires a beau named Graves (Leonard Preston). These two activities intersect
when Graves turns out to be employed by one Count Foscatini (Sidney Kean), who seems to have
business of some sort with the owner of the auto dealership, Bruno Vizzini (David Neal).
According to Graves, the Italian government is involved, but, this being 1936, which is the era of
Mussolini, the Italian officials in London are tight-lipped. The Count meets a bad end, and it falls
to Poirot to determine the who, why and how.
"The Chocolate Box" finds Poirot returning to Belgium in the company of Chief Inspector Japp
(Phillip Jackson), who is receiving an award for service to the Belgian government. On native
soil, Poirot confronts the specter of a 20-year-old case from his years as a junior officer on the
local force. A rising young politician, Paul Deroulard (James Coombes), died suddenly of what
the courts ruled a heart attack, despite Poirot's insistence that he had been poisoned with
chocolates supplied by one Xavier St. Alard (Geoffrey Whitehead), who is now mayor of the city
(and still bears a grudge against Poirot). Japp is fascinated to learn of a case where his old friend
did not prevail; so Poirot tells him the story. The episode is especially intriguing, because it
shows Poirot as a much younger man: trimmer, with more hair and attired in the elaborate
uniform of a Belgian policeman. It also reveals the origin of the unique stickpin that routinely
graces Poirot's lapel, in the shape of a miniature flower vase and always holding a fresh
blossom.
The title of "Dead Man's Mirror" refers to an antique for which Poirot is outbid at auction by
Gervase Chevenix (Iain Cuthbertson), a wealthy art collector who offers the mirror to Poirot as a
fee for unraveling a fraud that Chevenix believes has been perpetrated by an architect, John Lake
(Richard Lintern). Poirot and Hastings visit the Chevenix estate, an eerie estate full of Egyptian
relics and presided over by Vanda Chevenix (Zena Walker), a mystic who believes in the "spirit
plane". As the title foretells, Gervase Chevenix is shortly dead, an apparent suicide, but with
many inconsistencies that Poirot quickly spots. The clues are almost too numerous, and the
suspects all have motives, including Hugo Trent (Jeremy Northam), Chevenix' nephew, in whose
business Chevenix refused to invest but who might now inherit money under the dead man's
will.
The final episode, "Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan", finds Poirot dispatched to a resort
in Brighton on doctor's orders. He's been working too hard and needs complete rest. As luck
would have it, Brighton is also hosting a theatrical troupe performing a new play, Pearls Before
Swine, for which the PR gimmick is that the lead actress, Margaret Opalsen (Sorcha Cusack),
wears a fabulously valuable pearl necklace during each performance. At all other times, it's kept
under lock and key in the hotel suite Mrs. Opalsen shares with her husband, Ed (Trevor Cooper),
the company manager and owner. The suite just happens to be opposite Poirot's. When the
necklace disappears from its locked box, seemingly under the eyes of an attendant assigned to
watch it, Poirot's vacation abruptly endsand he's only too glad of the opportunity.
Acorn Media continues to defy expectation with their Blu-ray releases of Poirot, on which the
video quality improves with each successive series. The image on these two 1080p, AVC-encoded discs
(derived, as with the previous series, from 16mm sources) is the best yet, featuring
exceptional clarity and detail, so that even long shots showing large crowds successfully
differentiate individual faces, features, outfits and objects. Colors are saturated and frequently
vibrant, e.g., in the two different versions of the Jardins des Cygnes, at an Italian wedding and at
various scenes in Brighton. Blacks are truly rendered, which is essential for a period drama in
which formal attire was standard at dinnertime, and contrast remains at the appropriate level to
distinguish elements in the frame without blooming or blowing out detail. Film grain is readily
evident, but almost never obvious, and there are no indications of grain reduction, detail filtering
or artificial sharpening. The image remains natural and film-like, and of course there are no
compression artifacts.
After issuing two series of Poirot with PCM audio, Acorn has elected to return to Dolby Digital 2.0
at 256 kbps on Series 5. (The back of the disc case and slipcover erroneously state that the audio is
PCM.) It's unclear why Acorn made this change; obviously space can't be a consideration, since
each of the two discs contains one episode fewer than previous Poirot sets consisting of one-
hour episodes. As with the previous series, the sound is mono with identical left and right tracks that
collapse to the center when played through a matrix decoder.
The dialogue is certainly clear enough with DD 2.0, and Christopher Gunning's musical score
still sounds excellent. However, during the opening credits, Gunning's famous theme doesn't
have quite the same degree of presence, and the individual instruments aren't as differentiated, as
with the PCM presentation. Whether this change is attributable to the delivery format alone, or
indicates some sort of remix, is impossible to say. It certainly came as a surprise, because I initially didn't notice a difference when Acorn switched from
PCM to DD 2.0, but the change back was, for whatever reason, audible.
Acorn Media has already announced Series 6 of Poirot for August 28, 2012, at which point they
will have completed all episodes shown in the 20th Century. The show resumed broadcast just
after the millennium with feature-length episodes that aired at irregular intervals from 2000
through 2011. Expect to see those next year, but in the meantime enjoy these finely wrought
adventures of Agatha Christie's most famous creation. Highly recommended.
