The Plymouth Express

This episode's plot is quite slim. The main clues are just a meaningless jumble of train times and destinations, and the dull crime mystery doesn't have much to it anyway. Evidently there wasn't a lot of material to shoot so the proceedings have more padding than David Suchet's Poirot costume. Typical of this is the scene at the morgue. The coroner pulls the sheet back to expose the dressed corpse's head and shoulders for Poirot, Hastings and Japp to look at. After some straightforward dialogue, the camera just lingers on the men standing in silence. After this slowness, Poirot decides to pull the sheet further down. End scene. Inexplicable and silly.

More padding consists of extra wringing of hands and shaking of heads over the murder, plus portentous scenes of Poirot criticizing the criminals for the vicious stabbing alongside pointless flashbacks of the crooks staring at each other through the light of a match.

Which touches upon the episode's worst crime: Despite the lip service about the murder's horridness, the filmmakers exploit it for the crassest scene of violence I've yet seen in the series. Suffice to say it is a drawn-out stabbing where we must watch every moment of the excruciating death, including the scared-eyed victim's cheek smearing down the blood-stained window.

An embarrassment.

The Plymouth Express starts off with the usual high production values, the touches of humour. Florence Carrington, an heir to a mining fortune in Australia boards the Plymouth Express with all her jewellery and plans to meet a shady Frenchman who is pursuing her romantically with more than a passing interest in her wealth.

Florence is also estranged from her ex husband who likes to gamble. She is later found dead on the train.

Poirot was already asked by her father to look into the Frenchman and is now investigating her death. Despite the two obvious suspects, Poirot thinks the stolen jewels hold the key to the mystery.

This is a rather sombre and dark mystery with the reveal of the murderer being rather unsatisfying and hardly connected to the plot. I felt wrong footed but for all the wrong reasons.

The murder was serious and somber. The true impact of losing a loved one was felt quite keenly. Loved the actor playing the father. He was very powerful. One of my favorites. I could tell right away this was later expanded into The Mystery of the Blue Train.

Oddly enough, I had never noticed the connection between "The Plymouth Express" and "The Mystery of the Blue Train" until the writers of this episode brought my attention to it. Their deliberate use of characters with the same name and other details from the novel allowed me to see the similarity between the stories, despite the fact that the solution to the murder mystery is different in each case (somewhat similar, but still different). So kudos to them for that.

The thing that makes this episode stand out for me is that this is the only episode of the 15 year series (with the possible exception of "Curtain") in which the overall theme is that of unrelenting grief. This is one of the few episodes where the killer is shown cold-heartedly committing the murder, not just firing the gun or poisoning the coffee. The broken hearted father is shown in all his grief. And there is not one light-hearted moment to break up the tension and solemnity. I'm not sure if that makes it any better or worse than others. Quite frankly, the one and only episode so far that I've given a perfect 10/10 to ("The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim"), I liked for its delightful combination of comedy and clever detection. But I will say that this episode comes the closest to what an actual murder must be like for surviving family members. Not something I would want to watch every time, but an interesting change of pace.

I may be biased as I do love this series to death, but I did enjoy The Plymouth Express. It is not one of the best episodes, while I don't agree that the episode is embarrassing I do agree some of the episode feels padded out. The mystery is still involving and well paced in this episode, but compared to other episodes like say The ABC Murders the story itself feels slight, perhaps the reason why the episode felt padded. Despite this, there are several things that redeem it, including splendid production values, an evocative atmosphere, a haunting score and a script that has this usual tense and funny moments that is one of many things I love about Poirot. Not to mention a typically outstanding David Suchet as Poirot, amusing contrasts in Hugh Fraser, Phillip Jackson and Pauline Moran as Hastings, Japp and Miss Lemon respectively, and good support turns from especially Julian Wadham and Kenneth Haigh. The final solution is still as interesting as ever with the murder reenactment while slightly drawn out dramatically and atmospherically effective. Overall, I have seen better from the series(Wasp's Nest, The Chocolate Box, Adventure of the Italian Nobleman, Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb, Five Little Pigs, Sad Cypress, After the Funeral, ABC Murders) but it is above decent and better than Case of the Missing Will and in terms of feature-lengths Taken at the Flood and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. 8/10 Bethany Cox