User Reviews

Cards on The Table, while not Agatha Christie's best, is a very well crafted book, and quite complex and entirely involving. The adaptation starts off so well, and had such good promise- the episode is beautifully shot throughout with lavish costumes, and I had little problem with the performances. David Suchet is impeccable as always as Poirot, and Zoe Wannamaker is fine as Ariadne Oliver. The supporting performers Lyndsey Marshall, Lesley Manville, Alex Jennings, Tristan Gemill, Honeysuckle Weeks and Robert Pugh have little fault. In fact, my biggest problem with the adaptation was the plot changes(beware of spoilers)- I don't know why they changed Battle's name to Wheeler, likewise with Race with Hughes, why they made Rhoda a murderess, why they made Dr Roberts a homosexual, and why Mrs Lorrimer wasn't killed off. Though, almost every Poirot adaptation in existence take liberties with the books, both Murder in Mesopotamia and Murder of Roger Ackroyd had a first person narrative, not in the adaptations, and in Cat Among the Pigeons one of the victims was killed with a javelin, in the book she was shot, and the character of Mrs Vansittart was left out completely. Despite Alexander Siddig's excellent performance, I felt that the character of Mr Shaitana was underdeveloped, and some of the dialogue, especially Wheeler and Poirot's exchange was rather un-Agatha Christie. Overall, it is one of the weaker Poirot adaptations, but it is well made and well performed, so it wasn't a complete disaster. 7/10 Bethany Cox

"Here lieth an adaptation of Agatha Christie's CARDS ON THE TABLE. Its opening hour was the greatest of all time. The half hour that followed destroyed it all. May Agatha Christie's novel rest in peace." I'm shocked. This could've been the best Poirot movie ever! The first hour was page for page like the book, even to the order the suspects were questioned after the murder! But as soon as we got to Major Despard's past crime, it stopped being faithful. The changes reached a ridiculous point, to the point where there was a character swap between Anne Meredith and Rhoda Dawes. Anne became the sweet innocent young girl (she's still a kleptomaniac, by the way!) and Rhoda became the cold-blooded murderess. Not only that, the killer's motives were changed-- he/she is now homosexual! There are several other changes, but I won't mention them-- thinking about them makes me sick! If this is how Poirot movies will be in the future, I might as well stop buying them. Agatha Christie would've been disappointed. I can't give it a 1-- the first hour gave it so much promise! I'll give it a 7, the highest I can bring myself to give it.

I think this might be one of my favorite feature Length Poirot's. I know it deviates from the book, but I still think it's brilliant. The mystery is a sort of perfect crime. There are four (or five) suspects: all have motive, all have opportunity, all of them have killed before. The only way to figure out who the culprit is, is through psychology. Thankfully, they were all playing Bridge, a very psychologically revealing game. Then there's added factor that the victim, psychopathic crime fan Mr. Shaitana (a brilliant Alexander Siddig) was fully expecting to be killed, and had in fact drugged himself accordingly. The premise is so brilliant that it probably could have held me on its own, but, of course, it is also accompanied by David Suchet's always great performance as Poirot, and a splendid supporting cast who for the most part fully inhabit their characters. This marks Zoe Wannamaker's first appearance as Ariadne Oliver, the bumbling crime writer, whom Poirot reluctantly takes on as a sidekick. I understand from the reviews, that a lot of people don't like this character, but I personally find her hilarious and am glad that she is in so many of the later episodes. The rest of the cast is also very good. Alex Jennings, Lyndsey Marshal, Lesley Manville, and Tristan Gemmill all bring the mentalities of the four suspects to the screen. While David Westhead (I'm not his greatest fan) brings genuine vulnerability to his unlikely role as police superintendent. But the crowning glory is Alexander Siddig as Shaitana, with the screenwriter's help he takes a character who has initially a racial caricature and transforms him into the kind of Moriarty-type villain so fascinated with the machinations of crime that he is willing to die to experience them. I love characters like that and Siddig plays this one to the hilt. The only weak link the cast is Robert Pugh as Colonel Hughes from the foreign office. Knowing this was originally supposed to Colonel Race (who was perfectly portrayed by James Fox in Death of the Nile), this was a huge let down. Pugh, though good in other parts has none of Fox's jovial charisma, and is rather boring here. I also think the plot line concerning Miss Meredith's roommate should have been left out. It was melodramatic and in an episode where psychology carried the day, not very psychologically plausible. It's the reason this gets nine stars and not ten. Aside from that, I completely love this episode, and gladly recommend it, with the warning that the last half-hour is very different from the book, and that one really has to pay attention to details.

The TV adaption of one of Christie's masterpieces includes some major flaws. Several of the suspects are dramatically changed with no obvious reason. Why should the nice little Rhoda be turned into a monster? And why is Dr. Roberts chasing men instead of women? And why add a figure as Superintendent Wheeler to the cast? David Suchet is trying to speed up the investigation, but everyone else seems to slow down the tempo. Mtrs. Oliver glooms large here, but will be even more significant in the future. Some of the episodes in Agatha Christie's Poirot is brilliant, some is good, and most are average. This one fails to convince those addicted to Christie's puzzles.

This is a perfectly serious feature-length story. No Japp, Hastings, or Lemon. No boop-boop saxophone, just a whiff of Prokoviev. Little in the way of humor. But it's a fine and mostly simple story, kind of a "locked room" mystery.

A smooth, swarthy, and slightly overdone Syrian millionaire for whom crime is a hobby invites eight people to dinner and a night of bridge. Four are detectives of one sort or another, and these he puts at a card table in one room; the other four, for some reason or other, are shady in some way. The shady characters he puts at a card table in a second room, and the host himself takes chair nearby. The host is a repellently smooth narcissist, whose name is Shaitan. It means "Satan" in Arabic (شيطان). I owe that insight to an old friend, to whom this review is dedicated. (Thanks, Butch.) Also to a Western serial movie I saw as a child in a theater in Hillside, New Jersey, where Wild Bill Elliott translated the name. That must have been, let me think -- yes, 1906.

The host winds up dead -- drugged and stabbed through the heart with what looks like an unusually long and ornate hat pin. There are no secret panels; the lights never go out; and ghosts are forbidden by order of the management. One of the four shady types must have done it. The four suspects include a cool older woman, a shaky younger woman, a skirt-chasing doctor, and a mysterious adventurer with a killing in his past.

Poirot digs into all the characters, and each has some secret he or she needs to keep hidden -- just like the rest of us. There is a bit of thievery, a death that may or may not have been accidental, and even the hint of a love that dare not speak its name, although if it could it might say "lesbianism". It's assumed that the Syrian dug up some of this dish as well and so had to go.

I was never MOVED by it. Who can be moved by a jigsaw puzzle? But I genuinely enjoyed it from beginning to end. The performances are uniformly good, as they usually are, and two are exceptional -- Leslie Manville as the shady older woman delivers a carefully textured performance and Alex Jennings as the roguish doctor is outstanding, and funny. His secretary, Lucie Liemann, is singularly bright and sensual. The director makes this clear by means of a close shot of her swinging shapely legs. Yet the doctor has shown no more interest in her than he has for his stethoscope, which ought to tell us something.

The bad doctor is involved in one of the few amusing moments directed with panache by Sarah Harding. One of his patients is a young nymphomaniac who presents with an ear ache. "But it's not just my ear," she complains, "there are other parts of me that hurt too." And the director allows the camera to drift upward to Jenning's face, brimming with anticipation, gazing into space, but it's a bit of a red herring because the doc swings both ways. (It's difficult to imagine that homosexuality in both sexes, two of them made quite explicit, was in Agatha Christie's original story.)

The story is implausible, sure. They all are. But all are diversions and some are pretty good.

Overall I would rate Poirot 10/10 for a fantastic series! However... Cards on the Table... oh dear! A brilliant book and I was looking forward to watching the Suchet/Granada adaptation. After having watched it tonight I must say they have completely ballsed up! It starts off so well, setting the scene in a similar manner to the book. But as they reach the ending, they completely abandon the plot, and make up something completely different and nonsensical. Anne Meredith, is not a mentally disturbed individual who murdered her previous employer and then tries to kill her "best friend" Rhoda, but instead they give this role to Rhoda herself. With the consequence that Major Despard runs off with the wrong woman at the end! For some reason it is decided that Anne should also be the daughter of Mrs. Lorrimer. They then miss out one of the best bits when Dr Roberts kills Mrs Lorrimer, and is cleverly tricked by Poirot into confessing. Dr Roberts himself is supposed to have had an affair with Mrs Craddock, who he killed after killing her husband, NOT after having an affair with the husband! I not sure where they got the subplot where Superintendent Jim Wheeler (or SI Battle in the book) becomes the subject of suspicion, they could have used this time to put some of the real plot in. I am not someone who demands completely faithful reproductions of books onto the screen, so long as the spirit of the original is maintained. Bit this is just ridiculous! I would recommend Poirot fans go and read the book, or listen to the excellent audiobook with Hugh "Hastings" Fraser, to see how much better the plot is.

....and yet I'm still giving it a 6/10 rating, which should give you an idea of the general quality of this series.

Agatha Christie purists have often complained about changes from her original text in the latest 4 adaptations; personally, although I am a big AC fan, I didn't mind the changes, perhaps because I hadn't read or didn't remember (in "After the Funeral"'s case) the books! (Agatha herself had said that "The Mystery of the Blue Train" was one of her weakest novels, but the movie based on it was exciting and enjoyable; therefore I am guessing that most of the changes were for the better in that case). But with "Cards on the Table", you don't have to have read the novel to sense that they have altered Christie's story to an almost absurd degree. (spoilers follow) The low point, for me, was making Superintendent Wheeler gay AND a suspect; Poirot's last exchange with him ("Well, if you want to behave this way it is up to you, but personally I don't think it suits you") is corny as hell. Even if you take out the gay angle, the climax of this episode is weak: instead of accusing everyone and explaining step-by-step how he got to the truth, Poirot basically says: "It was not you....it was not you....it was not you....it was not you....it was YOU", and then he points to the murderer. Where is the fun in that? Another disappointment (and I don't know how much of it can be "blamed" on Christie herself) is that the story lacks that stunning, transcendent twist that separates her from the majority of mystery writers - the kind of twist "After the Funeral", to use an example from the same season, does have: here, 1 of the 4 suspects simply goes up to the (drugged) victim and stabs him in the chest while the other 3 aren't looking because they are too focused on their bridge game. Nothing very clever about that.

But not all is lost: the film is still well-made and well-produced, and a new, potentially regular face is introduced to the series: Zoë Wanamaker as Ariadne Oliver, the mystery writer and possible Agatha Christie alter ego. Mrs. Oliver is a more interesting sidekick for Poirot than Captain Hastings: she may not be on Poirot's intellectual level ("Who is, mon ami?"), but she is sharp, wily, and has her own set of eccentricities ("I used to have a secretary, but she was so competent it depressed me, so she had to go"). Zoë is quite delightful in the role, and I'm glad we'll be seeing more of her. Something good came out of this episode after all!

If there is one thing I hate, it is movies pretending to be based on books, which change the plot of said book. The change of murderess and heroine was bad enough, but what the heck motivated the script writer to insert gay porn into the story, and several gay men? They sure were not in the book. Agatha Christie rarely ever alluded to homosexuality in her books, and it is very easy to miss. Here, it comes with a sledge-hammer, and most certainly she would not have written such a plot. Now, if you want to make a movie about homosexuality in the 1930s, fine. Just don't call it "Agatha Christie" then.

Oh, and a note to writers of previous comments: This is not a "politically correct" thing, to insert random gay people into stories where they don't belong. Politically correct is treating (in this case) gay men decently. Randomly inventing pseudo-gay stories to "pepper up" a story that does not have them is not "politically correct" -- it is crap.

So, a note to the producers: If you want to make movies about homosexuality in the 1930s, fine. If you want to make movies from Agatha Christies books, also fine. Just stop mixing up the two.

Many of the reviews for Cards on the Table are scathing. As a kind of newbie to the Poirot mysteries, it wasn't bad, and certainly the prospect of Poirot swimming to save a couple of damsels in the closing scenes was something to ponder. I do miss the Scooby gang of Hastings, Japp and Lemon. Thankfully they reunite with Poirot in the final season.

Cards on the Table is one of my favorite Agatha Christie novels and I reread it every so often. But this film adaptation is absolutely awful, for reasons described by the other reviewers. I thought these versions were supposed to be faithful to the novels, not destroy them.

This novel is all about character and psychology so it perverts the entire story when the screenwriters completely rewrite the nature of the main characters. Not just Anne Meredith, Rhoda Dawes, Shaitana (he was too stupid and vain to think he'd get killed), and Mrs Lorrimer, but also Superintendent "Wheeler"-not the good Battle in the novel.

Suchet was his usual marvelous self as Poirot and Mrs Oliver was also well played, so this version retains three stars.

Please, someone make a better version of this story so I can get the bad flavor of this one out of my memory.