Day 182: Poirot, The King of Clubs

Show: Agatha Christie’s Poirot

Episode Particulars: S1EP9, “The King of Clubs”, original airdate March 5^th, 1989.

 Summary: Poirot and Hastings go to visit one of Hastings’ old friends, Bunny Saunders (Jonathan Coy), on the set of the film Saunders is directing. Unfortunately, the producer, Mr. Reedburn (David Swift), is a tyrant, tormenting both leading lady Valerie Saintclair (Niamh Cusack) and second leading man/former silent actor Ralph Walton (Gawn Grainger). That night, Reedburn is found dead in his library, and we the audience see that there were several people present who could have been responsible. Saintclair, it turns out, is the one who found the body, and ran to a nearby house to get help. By investigating the two houses, Poirot is eventually able to put all the pieces together, thanks in part to a bridge game and a missing King of Clubs. Well, card games are good for the little grey cells…

Standalone Thoughts: This episode gets a lot right. Multiple characters have a reason to want Reedburn dead, the murder is discovered before the halfway mark, Poirot spends most of the episode investigating the scene(s) and questioning people…it’s so very close to being classic Poirot. But it all kind of falls apart in the last fifteen minutes. This is partially because the evidence is a bit thin (the story doesn’t exactly withhold anything from us, but the explanation for how it all fits together is a bit lacking), but it’s mostly because of Poirot’s actions. And while I hate to do this, I’m going to have to warn for SPOILERS in order to properly explain it.

It kind of feels as though Poirot is covering up a crime for the sake of a friend, and that doesn’t sit well with me. It would be one thing if the murderer had done it to save a loved one from being killed, or would be dying soon themselves (as mentioned in Zoe Fraade’s post on mystery tropes). But this time? It’s to hide evidence of Saintclair’s past so she can get married to Poirot’s friend, who happens to be a prince. Said past isn’t all that shady, but it’s still not very nice, especially since I don’t think Poirot told his friend about it. Furthermore, Poirot rules that the death was an accident, not a murder, which I must assume is his way of justifying his keeping it a secret. Because even if the death happened by accident, attempts were made to cover it up, and that’s a crime in and of itself. Yet the episode seems to treat this as a happy ending, with Poirot not even feeling a twinge of a guilty conscience. Maybe it’s my own moral compass coming into play, but it kind of ruins the story for me.

SPOILERS OVER. Up until the ending, though, the episode is generally decent. Poirot, Hastings, and Japp (no Miss Lemon this time) all get some good lines or moments, there’s some nice sets and costumes scattered throughout, and of course I’m a sucker for anything that involves movie making. I do think that Niamh Cusack overplays Saintclair in the early scenes, but given that she’s supposed to be playing an actress from the 30’s, perhaps that was a deliberate style choice. On the whole, I probably wouldn’t have considered it a great Poirot even if the ending had been different, but we’re getting much closer to the familiar formula. Given the quality of the first series so far, I’ll take it.

Number of Tropes Followed/Subverted: A 3/15 for tropes, and 1/15 subversions. Despite movies being involved, there’s not even a hint of “Actors Insulting Themselves”, which I suppose is an achievement. As for tropes, there’s one spoiler trope, a small case of “Ambiguous Foreigners” (maybe it’s a stretch, but the fact that the police suspect a group of Romani living near the crime scene probably counts), and a grudging example of “Playing Fair”. We’re given most of the facts, so we could probably figure out the gist of what happened, but I still feel like the execution left a bit to be desired.

Other: *Based on his name, I assume Reedburn is supposed to be English, but he speaks so quickly and angrily most of the time that I thought he was German while watching him. Which made me smile a little, because that, combined with the fact that he was balding, made the movie buff in me think he was a parody of German directors of the time, which would have included Erich von Stroheim, Otto Preminger…and Fritz Lang. Anyone who knows my alter-ego Allison Tooey understands why that might have been a bonus for me.

*Poirot declares that “Films are very boring”, which I suppose makes sense for him (he goes on to say that the actors who need to put on a façade are more interesting to him). That didn’t stop me from saying “How dare you, sir!” though.

*There’s a brief sequence where Hastings attempts to explain modern art, putting forward a decent theory but concluding that it’s not very good. I can absolutely get behind that; give me Rococo or Impressionism any day, thank you.

Most Interesting Character: Although we’ve got a decent amount of characters this time, very few of them stood out, and those that did stood out in bad ways. So in the end, I went with;

Prince Paul of Maurania (Jack Klaff)

First off, that bedroom of his is amazing, and I gave him a few points just on the basis of the décor. On a more serious note, though, he seems like a nice man who has some sort of history with Poirot, and thus piques our interest. Why is he in Britain now? What did Poirot do that makes a prince insist Poirot use informal address? It’s the unspoken backstory that makes him interesting, even if it doesn’t matter too much to the actual plot. Which is at least a mark of good writing that we want to know more, even if it’s not exactly the thing we should be focusing on.