Agatha Christie is quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. There’s a true pleasure of her work that has been key to her unparalleled success: the plotting. Agatha Christie’s stories display a complexity that keeps audiences guessing and the ultimate solution is always unexpected.
The best celebration of Christie’s work naturally involves her two most celebrated sleuths, Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot. Both are eccentric outsiders—Marple a spinster, Poirot an undersized Belgian. Both are consistently underestimated, and both are ultimately successful.
In this sidebar, there are three classic Poirot mysteries perfectly complimented by a Miss Marple outing. Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-winning Murder on the Orient Express stars Albert Finney in his only incarnation as the Belgian sleuth Poirot. Peter Ustinov then exercised his “little grey cells” as Poirot in the subsequent Death on the Nile and Evil Under The Sun. Finally, everyone’s favourite crime-solving OAP, the Oscar-winning Angela Lansbury took centre stage as Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd.
Essential viewing for any Agatha Christie fan, these four films are regarded as the classic cinematic treatment, setting the template for countless versions to follow, with star-studded casts, exotic locations and sumptuous attention to detail.
