Hercule Poirot's Christmas: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection)

Hercule Poirot's Christmas is from Agatha Christie's classic period and is one of her famous family / house-party mysteries. To most people this is a great recommendation, however these housebound mysteries are not among my favourites - they usually come across a bit too insular and samey to be super-engaging and the characters can seem more cliche than usual. The characters in HPC are a pretty bland lot and they mostly stand around talking. This failing translates to this BBC dramatisation and makes it less exciting to listen to than some of the adaptations of Ags stories featuring better written characters, more action and more exotic or at least mixed locations.

Another failing in the story translates to the adaptation. The clues in HPC are very well placed and to a degree the solution is one of Agatha's unexpected and satisfying ones, however there is a single really really SILLY bit in the solution that is difficult to accept. This adaptation doesn't deal with that silly bit in a non-silly way - in fact the silliness is increased rather than mitigated. Can't say too much without giving it away, but it's a pretty big flaw and it just boggles me that something wasn't done about it.

Having absolutely slagged off the source book (sorry Ags) I have to say this dramatisation is a very faithful adaptation of HPC, and the character voices are absolutely spot on. Simeon Lee sounds as nasty and curmudgeonly as he should, pompous George and his mewing wife Madeleine are a bit of fun, and Pilar, Simeon Lee's young grand-daughter, provides at least a passable Spanish accent to break up the English-accent monotony. John Moffat is a better Poirot, but Peter Sallis does a good job too.

In short: A faithful BBC adaptation of high standard - but a housebound Christie with not particularly exciting characters and a flaw in the solution makes its presence felt.


A Christmas Classic   September 30, 2001
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

This is my favorite Agatha Christie audio play and as far as I know the only time Peter Sallis has played Poirot. This is a shame as he is superb in the role.

We have the usual murder in a large house setting with red herrings aplenty but in addition to this we've got the seasonal element complete with falling snow which gives us a very atmospheric tale.

Wait for a cold winters night or, even better, Christmas eve itself then pour yourself a large glass of something sit back and enjoy!


Not perfect, but excellent for Christmas.   December 10, 2000
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

This play is not as bad as some people would have you believe. It's probably one of the most surprising and rather unbelievable stories of Miss Christie's career but it has always been a favourite of mine. In fact, if nothing else, it's got quite a surprising conclusion and has a perfect Christmas atmosphere.

The acting is rather lame however. There is a scene on side 1 for instance, where the character of David Lee is playing the piano and recalling his dead mother which is, quite frankly, hilarious. This however, doesn't matter since it is certainly a scene which makes you laugh rather more than it makes you annoyed. A rather less pleasent aspect is that the actors appear to be taking part in a "first to finnish the script" race. This is by far the most annoying aspect of the play.

The only other thing I didn't like was Peter Sallis as Poirot. Morris Denham played him as if he was drunk, I admit, but at least he made a decent attempt at a French accent! Sallis' performance sounds like "Wallace & Gromit's Christmas" more than Hercule Poirot's! Although, thankfully, he improves by the second tape and of course, one gets used to almost anything.

Not perfect then, but thouroughly enjoyable and after all, at Christmas, that's what counts.


A Real Shame, And An Experience To Be Avoided   November 26, 2000
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

This, the latest from the BBC's Agatha Christie radio play collection, is a real shame. I'm a big fan of the BBC's collection of Agatha Christie radio plays, I own nearly all of them, listen to them quite regularly, and I was very pleased to hear that they were releasing a cassette of Hercule Poirot's Christmas. It's a goofy little story and one I've always enjoyed. But now I've bought the thing I feel cheated and angry. And I certainly don't like to think of people buying this to stuff into the Christmas stockings of the Agatha Christie fan in their lives, just because it has a Christmas theme. Get your pet Christie fan one of the other BBC Christie plays, one of the good ones, like A Murder Is Announced, or The Mystery Of The Blue Train, and not this appallingly low quality set!

The play is an old one (dating from 1986) with a very poor cast (including Peter Sallis as a totally wooden Hercule Poirot, indeed, listening to this play makes it quite clear why John Moffatt has played Poirot for Radio 4 since) and to top matters off, they have released a 90 minute play on two cassettes. Considering that all the other two cassette sets in this series contain at least two and a half to three hours of listening, a mere ninety minutes is a very poor deal. And apart from the matter of value, the play is so short that chopping it into 4 sections means that it is necessary to turn the cassette over far too often. I don't understand why they haven't played fair and released this play as one cassette, either on its own or packaged with another short play, hopefully one with a better cast! All the other short Christie plays the BBC have released have been released in pairs, which gives us fans much better value overall.

On its own, this play of Hercule Poirot's Christmas is a sad waste of time... To do the play justice, the actress playing the part of Pilar makes a valiant attempt to inject a little lightness into procedings, but it's her versus the rest of the cast, I'm afraid. And one half-way decent performance is not enough reason for me to ever listen to this tape again!