Poirot: The Dream

 "I am too understanding towards my employees!"

I may have been somewhat ambivalent towards this series- despite some solid acting and well-developed characters for a whodunit series- the scripts have been somewhat variable in quality, and I suspect that Agatha Christie's detective story talents lend themselves more to a longer format than the short stories upon which these stories are based. I shall, one day, return to Poirot.

Ot's pleasing, though, for the series to finish upon such a high. I love how the creative introduction to Farleys Foods via the nostalgia hit of British Pathe leads to a succession of scenes showing us how Benedict Farley is an old Victorian industrialist bastard who sneers at unions and is rude as hell. His thick glasses and muttonchops, surely an affectation in the much more modern 1935, mark him out as the pantomime villain he is, even sacking his daughter's lover for being too non-U.

The murder mystery is playfully clever, with Joely Richardson's character being almost metatextual in how she declares herself to Poirot to be so obviously guilty that she must surely be the red herring. I love, also, how Poirot has a comical moment of crisis with the Belguan sleuth equivalent of writer's block and the comical B plot with Miss Lemon's typewriter.

When I return tom Poirot, let's have more like this... but longer episodes, please. Until then, adieu.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes: The Priory School

 "You have given me back my future..."

Another splendid episode here, with a more or less faithful adaptation of the story filmed in the glorious surroundings of the Derbyshire Dales where the Midlands meets the North, and partly filmed in Chatsworth House itself.

It should be a commonplace by now to point out that Jeremy Brett is sublime, but this episode gives him more opportunities than usual to enjoy himself with Homes' many physical and verbal mannerisms that his performance made definitive. edward Hardwick excels too, though in a slightly reduced role. It's always good to see Christopher Benjamin, too.

The story, as with Doyle's original, is an entertaining one, although it is further than most Sherlock Holmes stories from fulfilling the rules of detective fiction which did not then exist. Could there be, perhaps, in the story of the Duke's family originating as cattle thieves, a little light mockery of the whole aristocratic principle on the part of the good Dr Doyle? I ought to re-read the short story and see. But this, as an adaptation, is pretty much faultless. Right now, they bloody well all are..,