Agatha Christie's Poirot: Series 3, Episode 5 - “Wasps' Nest” (1991)

Poirot and Miss Marple are two British TV series I keep meaning to get around to.  I enjoy poking through favorite actors' filmographies on IMDb, and it didn't take me long to realize that oodles of excellent British actors have guest-starred in at least one of these two shows.  Matthew Macfadyen, Jack Davenport, and Fenella Woolgar are just a few of the actors who've gotten their Agatha Christie on.  And of course, since “Wasps' Nest” is popping up here, so has PC.

 

In “Wasps' Nest,” the great Belgian detective runs into his old friend John at a village fete and immediately begins to notice uneasy circumstances.  John has a beautiful fiancée with a jilted ex, there's a sinister-looking stranger lurking about, and a jar of cyanide can kill more than just wasps.  There's no murder to speak of yet, but Poirot is determined to avert it before it happens.  

 

The aforementioned jilted ex is Claude Langton, a young artist played by PC.  Claude has remained on good terms with John, despite his enduring love for John's fiancée, but Poirot isn't so eager to accept things at face value.  As one who's made a career out of investigating murders, he knows that hatred can wear the mask of civility.

 

On the whole, it's a pretty good performance.  The central mystery and its characters are well-written, so Claude has a few dimensions for PC to work with.  There's an affable friendliness to Claude which makes it easy to buy into John's insistence that he wouldn't hurt a fly, but it's played with just enough ambiguity that you can think it might be an act.

 

It's always interesting to me when short pieces of literature are adapted into longer film/TV works, and “Wasps' Nest is a good example:  from 12-page short story to hour-long TV episode.  There's a little padding – subplots woven in about a few of Poirot's associates, who don't even appear in the original story – but the longer format allows for plenty of expansion on the mystery.  Most of the actual goings-on in the story are actually recapped in conversations between Poirot and John, while the episode shows these various events happening and adds in a few of its own.  Lucky for me; if it hadn't, PC would've only been in one scene and maybe a narrated flashback or two!

 

Accent Watch

 

A pretty great-sounding RP – I was impressed.

 

Recommend?

 

In General – If you like detective stories and don't mind early-90s British TV, I'd say yes.  A well-acted, good mystery.

 

PC-wise – Maybe.  It's a nice role with a bit of range to it.

 

Warnings

 

The threat of murder, obviously, though I can't tell you whether it's actually committed without spoiling the ending.  Either way, early-90s Masterpiece stuff – it's not going to be gruesome.  Also a spot of bother for the coulrophobic.