The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

An unusual framing device is used for this meandering tale. At first I thought that the director was being arty as this was the first episode of the seventh series of Poirot. Poirot narrates this tale but there is something in the words he uses to describe some of the people that just makes it seem odd.

Poirot has retired to a village life and is trying to grow giant marrows and failing. Poirot at long last visits an old friend's factory. An industrialist Roger Ackroyd who Poirot once loaned some money to and Ackroyd has made a great success of his company. Yet Poirot makes disparaging remarks about the man in his commentary, like he dislikes Ackroyd.

Roger Ackroyd is found dead after a dinner party which Poirot had attended. Ralph Paton his feckless stepson is the main suspect but he has disappeared. There is also the intriguing case of a widow, Mrs Farris who killed herself almost a year after her husband died. Mrs Farris was linked somehow to Roger Ackroyd.

Poirot reluctantly comes out of retirement and gets involved in the investigation once Inspector Japp turns up.

The episode is let down by a leaden pace, it is another feature length episode that feels overstretched. I liked the production design which I know deteriorates in later years of Poirot. However I felt the director's misdirection was not sufficient enough to point away from the actual murderer.

The shoot out at the end was laughably banal, all that was missing at the end was a vat of acid for the body to fall into.

Too bad. What should have been an intriguing and shocking Christie mystery ended up as a run-of-the-mill, made-for-TV mess --- the worst thing that a Poirot episode can be. The only shocking things about it are how the book was rewritten so much, and how the action unfolded in such a cheesy manner. I understand that some variations may help when trying to translate a novel to the screen, but, really, when three main suspects have been omitted, another perpetually ignored throughout the production, and another killed off during the movie (and NOT during the book!!), something is seriously wrong. Not to mention all of the swearing and gratuitous violence absent from the book and unbecoming of a Poirot film with David Suchet. Did we really need to see Roger Ackroyd gurgling and shaking his jowls for three minutes after getting stabbed in the neck? And what was going on with that climax? Was the director trying to recreate the chemical plant scenes from "Batman"? And there were many more butchered parts, too.

The first step towards making the film more interesting would have been putting the Dr. Sheppard character into more of a "Captain Hastings" role, a sidekick for Poirot, as he was in Christie's book. This would increase his relevance to the story and make the ending more effective. Of course, the whole production would have to be redone from the ground up to make it good. Sadly, Suchet probably won't be involved with such a remake since he has already been used for this misfire. At least he and Phillip Jackson picked up paychecks for their trouble.

Such a disappointment, especially compared to the recent A&E version of "Lord Edgeware Dies", which was nicely done, and also featured Suchet and company.

The book on which this is based is one of the cleverest in all literature. The detective story is a matter of intellectual battle between the reader and the writer for control over the larger arc of the story. In most cases, the writer's avatar is the narrator. But what if the narrator is a character in the story and caught up in motivations from the fictional world?

It is a fantastic idea, that of the untrusted narrator. And it is one that clever writers and filmmakers have been using for a long time. Kubrick was one over on the film side and still after all those viewings most people take him literally. Just goes to show that it is very hard to do one of these untrusted narrator things in film. And it is nearly impossible if you have to aim as low as a TeeVee audience.

Clive Exton, the adapter, is the long time defiler of Christie. Who will do these again in my lifetime now that he has ruined the magic of them? In this case, he transforms the clever narrative device into a journal that Poirot reads as we see the story unfold. Exton doesn't go as far as inferring that what we see is literally what Poirot reads and in fact its sort of a muddle. One gets the impression it is there to mollify curmudgeons like us who wonder where the book fits in.

As with all Exton adaptations, complexities are eliminated, suspects erased and endings turned into dramatic TeeVee events.

But there is some joy here. As dull as the adapter is, the director tries to be clever. The opening shot, where Poirot recovers the journal, is a terrific piece of staging and I would be proud of it if it were mine. Throughout, he artfully plays on the nature of shadows. Just a little more would have been welcome.

Each of these plays by the BBC rulebook of places and faces. One of those rules is that one of the young women must be very pretty. In the past, we've even seen Polly Walker. Here, the duty falls to Daisy Beaumont.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

For those of you who have NOT read the novel by the same name by Agatha Christie, you may indeed think my criticism of this adaptation somewhat harsh. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is easily one of the greatest mystery novels and particularly one of Christie's best ever written. It is a great novel and is definitely a hard one to truly bring to the screen(small screen in this case)entirely faithful. Allowances must be made, but the script from this adaptation meanders a good deal from much of the source material. I did not like the framing device used. Why not have the narrator in the novel narrate? How bout that hokey ending with its proverbial "shootout" to get the audience's attention? And what about Poirot cracking the case in question? These major departures from the book greatly diminished my favor with this film. It is done very stylishly. The acting is as always very good. David Suchet makes the best Poirot and certainly the most faithful to the books. But this mystery has been twisted and contorted too much so that I can only faintly see Christie. What a shame! I would have really liked to see how Suchet and company could tackle this innovative novel. I came, I saw, I sighed!

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was, I believe, the first Agatha Christie I read, so many years ago it's frightening. I do remember a lot about it, though, and watched this episode with great anticipation.

Unlike some on this board, I couldn't possibly remember some of the book details that were left out, but I knew something was missing. The book packed such a wallop, it was breathtaking.

This episode, alas, seemed ordinary to me.

Hercule Poirot has retired to King's Abbott and is working on growing marrow. When a friend of his, Roger Ackroyd, is found murdered in his home, Poirot looks into the case. Inspector Japp joins him, so the to old friends are reunited.

Just the day before, there had been the suicide of Mrs. Dorothy Ferrars. She was Roger's great love. Poirot begrudgingly is pulled further into the case, where he tries to figure out the motive as he sorts through suspects: a secretly married couple, Mrs. Ackroyd, etc.

From the beginning, Poirot reads a journal, the journal of the murderer. In the book, the story is narrated by someone else. Also, there is no second murder. Japp was not present; it was an antagonistic inspector. Poirot's actual Hastings in this story was Dr. Sheppard, who has a small role here.

What a shame -- of all the stories to wreck, this is the one they picked. I'm a little disappointed in the Christie estate. They sold these stories without any care of what would happen to them.

I loved Suchet, as always, and Japp.