Which adaptation of Marple or Poirot was the biggest let down for you?

Endless Night too - Miss Marple had no business in that story!

For Miss Marple, I'm not a fan of the Geraldine McEwan or Julia McKenzie adaptations. Those adaptations changed plots and characters of the original books (e.g. incorporating lesbian affairs, changing the identities of some killers, renaming or removing significant characters, and even using stories from other books in which Miss Marple did not originally feature).

I always go back to the Joan Hickson versions. Those are hands down the best.

JOAN WAS GOOD BUT LACKED ENOUGH CHARISMA TO HAVE PEOPLE OPEN UP TO HER

The Body in the Library (the Geraldine McEwan adaptation). Not only did they change the identity of the murderer, they made two of the characters lesbians which is about as far away from what occurs in the novel as can be imaginable.

The recent Marples have to many duds, it s difficult to choose, maybe Spleeping Murder, which got the tone of the book completely wrong. It even had a vaudeville number.

I didn’t much mind that , r4, I thought the change in the murderer identity didn’t alter the story and motives.

From the Poirot’s, Appointment with Death was terrible to the point of looking like a different story in the same setting.

I agree R5 those 2 are the most significantly changed that I can think of apart from Nemesis which made so many unnecessary changes too. You scratch your head and wonder how this got approved. Killer nuns. The Funny Bones. Tut

Third girl was also pretty bad, though the book has a plot device (completely ludicrous) which is difficult to film....but there were a lot unnecessary changes.

Two of them are tied for me (some minor spoilers):

The first is "The Mystery of the Blue Train." That whole psychosexual crap given as the reason for the murder and the disfiguring of the victim's face. The added sub-plots and characters in that adaptation, some of which were truly absurd. (A nighttime Ninja attack? An end game hostage situation? Really?) "The Mystery of the Blue Train" is one of Christie's weaker efforts but the adaptation was awful.

The second is the 1984 version of "Ordeal By Innocence." One of the questions the novel addresses is whether one should stir up a murder case that has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. It's a question that runs throughout the entire book, eventually reaching a conclusion. The movie reached the opposite conclusion, which really irritated me. I get that movies don't always need to be faithful to the book but this seemed like such an unnecessary change.

And that's not even counting the awful Dave Brubeck score, the reveal of the murder to the audience halfway through the movie, which makes the second half anti-climactic, a completely wasted cast (Plummer, Sutherland, Miles, McShane, Dunaway, the latter of whom has about three minutes of screen time), Elphick's horrible Scottish accent, and the utter boredom one experiences in watching this movie.

R8, I hadn't seen Ordeal by Innocence but found it online. Your review is spot on. That score is truly dreadful. It doesn't fit the movie at all. Such a waste of a great cast, too, as you observed. Even though I'm not British and therefore not an expert on how accents should sound, even I could tell Michael Elphick's Scottish accent was wrong. All that, and the movie was a bit tedious and boring.

What about the version of "Appointment With Death" that was made with Peter Ustinov as Poirot?

Has anyone else seen this?

Also has Lauren Bacall and Carrie Fisher.

I love in Ordeal By Innocence how Dunaway is Sarah Miles mom or stepmom and yet Faye looks younger.

I remember seeing it many years ago, r10, it was nothing special but still better than the Suchet one.

Bump

"For Miss Marple, I'm not a fan of the Geraldine McEwan or Julia McKenzie adaptations. Those adaptations changed plots and characters of the original books (e.g. incorporating lesbian affairs, changing the identities of some killers, renaming or removing significant characters, and even using stories from other books in which Miss Marple did not originally feature)."

Omg, they added LESBIANS, how dare they! Seriously, did some homophobic old biddies invade this board?

I think r2 was complaining about that there were changes, not objecting to the homosexuality per se, r14. I for one think the gay character in Suchet’s Five Little Pigs (one of the better adaptations) worked great and made much more sense for the plot.

The Mirror Crack's featuring 5-time Tony Winner Angela Lansbury may be the one film adaptation of a Miss Marple story where Marple has so little screen time. Gary Arnold in the Washington Post review said, The Christie plot ends up so drastically foreshortened that you'd swear a reel must have been misplaced."

There were 3 TV movies made with Peter Ustinov as Poirot after the splendid movies "Death on the Nile" (1978) and "Evil Under the Sun" (1982).

These were "Thirteen at Dinner" in 1985.

Also "Dead Man's Folly" in 1986.

And "Murder in Three Acts" in 1986.

The lackluster movie "Appointment With Death" was made in 1988.

By far the worst Poirot (and one of the worst Christie movies) was Tony Randall in "The Alphabet Murders."

Thank you, R15. I love how R14 just assumes HOMOPHOBIC OLD BIDDY, but ignores that there are other changes listed in my criticisms. As R15 wrote, I was just objecting to the changes themselves because they added nothing to the storyline or simply didn't make sense in the overall context of the story. In the Joan Hickson version of A Pocketful of Rye, I had read the book many years before I saw the TV adaptation. I never thought of Hutch and Murgatroyd as lesbians, but when I saw the Hickson version and how it was pretty obvious to astute viewers that these characters were lesbians, it made total sense. The McEwan and McKenzie versions just seem to make random changes that don't really add to the story.

R14's unsupported rant based on an incorrect assumption is what's wrong with many in today's society. I hear people screaming racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, etc., all the time based on assumptions that are incorrect. Those words lose their meaning when they're thrown around without any thought whatsoever or any evidence that what is said is actually true. All those things exist. Don't lessen their meaning by casually throwing out unsupported allegations.

Your assumption was incorrect, R14. Think about that next time before you accuse someone.

[quote]Seriously, did some homophobic old biddies invade this board?

R14 many Poirot and Marple fans are raging anti-gay bigots who rage at any implication that characters might be gay. Really want to piss them off? Say Poirot is gay and watch them shit themselves with rage.

There were a lot of tall, hot, aristocratic-looking guys cast in the Joan Hickson series in the 80s.

Most were blond and gorgeous.

I think you are confusing A Pocketful of Rye with A Murder is Announced, r19. That said, even-in the book of A Murder is Announced the lesbian side is pretty obvious for the time.

I don’t mind changes that update the plot , The Body in the Library is a case in point, they just changed, in my view cleverly, the identity of one pair of the murderers and it worked. Everything else, alibis, motivations, plot,remained. What puzzles (and irritates) me is the random changes that add nothing and destroy the whole thing (Christie stories are underrated and work like a simple but perfect mechanism , a random change can throw the off balance).

"I hear people screaming racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, etc., all the time based on assumptions that are incorrect. Those words lose their meaning when they're thrown around without any thought whatsoever or any evidence that what is said is actually true. All those things exist. Don't lessen their meaning by casually throwing out unsupported allegations."

Yawn, this is what conservatives always say when you call them out on their bigotry. Btw, they're always the first people to accuse minorities of playing the victim while asserting that straight white men are the real victims of society

"many Poirot and Marple fans are raging anti-gay bigots who rage at any implication that characters might be gay. Really want to piss them off? Say Poirot is gay and watch them shit themselves with rage."

Correct. I read some blog by a Christian woman ranting about all the gay characters in the newer Christie adaptations. She sounded a lot like r19....

Wow, R14 and R23, you are both so off base it's ridiculous. R14 assumed something based on an innocuous statement in my original post at R2 makes me a homophobe. Now R23 claims I'm aligned with conservatives by pointing out R14 was dead wrong and how R14, as well as others, shouldn't make rash assumptions.

I've never voted Republican in my life, I've been out of the closet since age 19 (now in my early 50s), in college I was the president of the newly formed student gay organization, I was the leader of the newly formed LGBT group at work and was the representative of the group for several years, and have been in other jobs, including my current one. But no, keep telling yourselves that I'm a homophobe based on a statement that I didn't care for the changes made to plots that added nothing to the story, one of which happened to be a lesbian affair, the others having nothing to do with sexuality.

R23 also compares me to a Christian woman ranting on some unnamed blog, again because I point out how R14 was wrong and caution against accusations that aren't true or supported. I'm not a Christian nor am I religious at all. You're both wrong. Suck it up and move on. I've no doubt done more for moving gay rights forward that you both ever have. I'm sure you think anonymous postings accusing someone wrongly of being a conservative homophobe make you feel like you're doing so much for the cause. Reality check; you're not.

R24 I knew what you or they meant when they said it. The way it was worded I knew someone was going to call them out.

They were just implied to be a lesbian couple that ran a farm. The Joan Hickson version makes this pretty clear and no one judges them.

The ITV version was a bit of a mess. I don’t care that you could tell they were a “real couple” because they were miscast. I didn’t buy that either women (older in the book too) could have ran a farm.

I don’t think the poster was homophobic at all.

I just can’t stand any of the Joan Hickson Marples. It ruins it for me even if they’re accurate to the books. Whoever mentioned her lack of charisma is spot on. There’s simply nothing at all interesting or worth watching about her.

r24 = another butthurt Trumpster pissed about being called out.

R27 can't read, which isn't surprising since he/she uses "butthurt" in his/her sentence.

Have to second Endless Night. Such a great book, but the adaptation was so disappointing. Actually, ANY of the adaptations where Miss Marple is randomly inserted into the story - Towards Zero, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Ordeal by Innocence, The Pale Horse, etc

I kind of liked By the Pricking of My Thumbs. I thought Geraldine McEwan and Greta Scacchi had a fun chemistry together.

There is nothing homophobic about pointing out that lesbianism in particular is used in the Marple adaptations for prurient reasons. Lesbians are either the killers or the ones being killed. So predictable and bloody pathetic.

I think they added Miss Marple to "The Sittaford Mystery" too.

The adaptation of Grease was the biggest letdown

"There is nothing homophobic about pointing out that lesbianism in particular is used in the Marple adaptations for prurient reasons"

That's not what the poster said.

R34, the poster also didn’t say he or she didn’t like the changes because he or she thought there was something wrong with lesbian relationships. He or she even explained further that it was because the changes didn’t add anything to the story. Yet the poster was still accused of homophobia and being a Trump supporter. How those other posters got that from what he or she wrote is completely unsupported.

r35 = the homophobic poster, trying to defend himself