Have Your Say

Television and Film

Talk about Christie TV and Film here

Christie's Sense of the Period

Jilly 08 Oct 08 at 2:15 p.m. GMT

One of the reasons I have enjoyed reading Christie is because her writing took us across most of the 20th Century , she always gave us a sense of the period in which the novel was set and a lot of the time the period played a large part in the plot of the book ,I'm now getting dissappointed with the  Poirot series as they seem to only want to set him in that sudo ArtDeco era that really only lasted a very short time in the UK, 'Third Girl' being the perfect example it was set in 1966 and this was an incredible time for swinging London, so setting the ITV drama in that fake Deco era went against everything that Christie tryed to get across in the novel.

I worry for Halloween Party one of my favorite Christies this is set in 1969 one year off the 70's it just isn't going to work if they dont use the correct period, I want to see flares and floating maxi dresses not tailored suits and startched collars.

Login or register to add posts and reply

3 replies

Reverse order

GKCfan 25 Oct 08 at 8:40 p.m. GMT

I believe that in "After the Funeral," we are told that the year is definitely 1937. I need to check "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" again– I think that the year is given there. I have noticed a number of current events in recent episodes– "Sad Cypress" shows Poirot warning about the rise of Hitler. The four most recent films haven't been released in America yet, so I can't comment on those. I have a feeling that "Curtain" will be set in the immediate postwar years, like it was originally intended to be.

Marc_Anton 24 Oct 08 at 12:20 p.m. GMT

Indeed Christie's evocation of London during the 'hippy period' was not very convincing, it dripped with clichés and I doubt she ever spent time in a Chelsea espresso bar or an of-the-road art gallery herself. It did not struck me as very real.

Viewers might have noticed that the Poirot episodes are now slowly moving toward the end of the 1930s, I think we are now in 1937. There is not so much Art Deco in the sets as in the earlier episodes from the late 1980s. Poirot even did some redecorating in his apartment, it now looks like later 30s American office style. His earlier apartment was so cluttered with all kind of knick-knacks I didn't really associate with Poirot.

Also, the film of the first Poirot novel (Styles) was set in 1917 so the step to the 1060s (Third Girl) or even the 70s (Halloween Party) would be gigantic. I don't think we want to SEE Poirot ageing 50 years or more. This didn’t bother the readers of the books since several generations grew up while Christie penned down her stories. I think it is a right decision that the producers stuck with the middle to late 1930s and fixed Poirot during a certain decade. Perhaps you noticed that there are little mentionings of actual social or political mile stones that took place: the death of Gershwin, the Mosley black shirts etc.

squatty 08 Oct 08 at 6:06 p.m. GMT

I was quite pleased that the TV version of Third Girl was set in "traditional Christie period". One of the things I found rather embarrassing about the book was AC's attempts (and she was in her seventies at the time) to portray London in the swinging sixties. Also, she didnt seem to work out how to fit Poirot into this era either. In Third Girl and some of the later novels, Poirot comes across as quite pervy in his reaction to the young male characters