Agatha Christie's Poirot: Curtain, Poirot's Last Case - ITV review (no spoilers)

Agatha Christie's Poirot came to an end last night with Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, and we were treated to a suitably dark production of Kevin Elyot's screenplay. I don't want to include any spoilers at all in this particular review, but suffice to say that David Suchet's performance as the great detective was one of his very best. What a brilliant actor he is, and how wonderfully he has interpreted Poirot, transforming him from a collection of unlikely idiosyncracies into a character we actually care about , and not just because of his little grey cells. I am full of admiration.

Curtain, as most people know, was written when Christie was at the height of her powers, even though it was not published until the Seventies. I read it shortly after it was published, and I thought then - and I still think - that it is one of her finest detective novels. This is not a view universally shared, I must admit, but some of the ideas in the book strike me as breathtaking. I think the culprit's modus operandi is absolutely fascinating, while the locked room scenario and the final startling revelation are classic devices.

It can't have been easy to adapt such an unorthodox story, but Kevn Elyot made an extremely good job of it. He dispensed with the detail of the explanation that Poirot gives, early in the book, for his decision to return to Styles Court, and some viewers may, I suppose, have found this one of the more perplexing stories in the series,but I felt Elyot struck a very good balance between giving clues and not giving the game away.

The cast as a whole was very good, with Hugh Fraser giving of his best as Hastings, and Philip Glenister, an actor of great versatility, playing a part as unlike Gene Hunt as could be imagined. The series has provided us with first class entertainment for a quarter of a century, and I've enjoyed it all the way.

Hidden - TV review

A downmarket, dogged criminal lawyer called Harry works in a scruffy city backstreet. Harry has been damaged by the death of someone very close to him and has a troubled love life, as well as an eye for a pretty woman. When he gets dragged into a murky case involving the murder of an attractive woman, he visits a gym as part of his enquiries, and runs into more trouble for his pains.

These were all elements of my first novel, All the Lonely People, so I was intrigued to see them reprised in the new four part BBC TV thriller Hidden, by Ronan Bennett. Hey, I knew my story-line was a good one! Joking apart, I won't be sueing for plagiarism, because in fact what Bennett has written is not a whodunit but a conspiracy thriller, with a political dimension (a bit like Take My Breath Away!) And Bennett's Harry is known to some of his mates as 'H', which reminded me of Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday.

All this shows, of course, is that there's nothing new in the world. Bennett has, however, tried to give the material a fresh feel by interweaving several convoluted plot elements, with copious flashbacks. A great deal of suspension of disbelief is required, especially when a mystery woman claiming improbably to be a lawyer offers Harry a large sum of money to find a man. In the Google era, it takes seconds to discover that she is not who she claims to be. As for the political storyline (is the Prime Minister the victim of a plot orchestrated by his smug colleague?), it struck me as not much more authentic than the portrayal of legal life.

And yet there's something about Hidden that encourages me to watch episode 2. That something is the presence of Philip Glenister, a very enjoyable actor, in the role of Harry. He carries the whole thing along with his usual rugged charm. I'm not sure I care much about the various mysteries, but I'll be interested to see how Bennett weaves all the strands together.

State of Play: review

When the film of State of Play came out, I heard about the television serial on which it was based, which I missed completely when it was screened seven years ago. But I liked the sound of it, so I bought the DVD version, and I’ve just finished watching it – something that proved to be a very enjoyable experience.

The story gets off to a dramatic start. A ruthless gunman shoots a young black man, and also fires at a passing driver who witnessed the crime. A woman dies in an accident on the Tube – but did she jump or was she pushed? She turns out to have been an assistant to a prominent back-bench MP – and they had been involved in a torrid affair. The truth about their relationship quickly comes out, and a friend and former campaign manager of the MP, who is also a top investigative journalist, starts to look into the mystery. To complicate matters further, the newshound begins an affair with the MP’s unhappy wife.

There are six episodes in all, and while the series begins quite brilliantly, I felt that episodes four and five could easily have been reduced to a single episode, since the pace flags. However, the final instalment is very good, and there is a pleasing twist to the conspiracy-thriller type of plot.

State of Play was written by Paul Abbott, one of our most successful TV writers, and he gave a fascinating account of the newspaper and political worlds. His excellent screenplay was enhanced by terrific acting. John Simm, whom I really admire as an actor, was as good as ever as the journalist, while David Morrissey was appropriately selfish as the MP. Bill Nighy’s quirky performance as the newspaper editor was marvellously conceived, and there were excellent contributions from the rest of the cast, which included Philip Glenister and the under-rated Amelia Bullmore. Recommended.