Ten Little Poirots & Marples: Ranking Agatha Christie's Detectives on the Screen

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Tv & Film, Books, Film Reviews, Arts

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's another episode focused on the adaptations of Agatha Christie: specifically, those talented actors who have brought life to Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple in films and television for nearly 100 years now. Who will win the title of Greatest Poirot and Greatest Marple of Them All? And how will the rankings leading up to my #1 picks shake out? I surprised myself with a few of my choices here, and I look forward to receiving outraged responses from at least a few of you. Special thanks to Scott Ratner for his spirited commentary on one of these actors, and the valuable insights his perspective provided.

Please note that I spoil the plot of Curtain, and also the 2018 adaptation of The ABC Murders in this episode.

Click here to purchase tickets for my panel at the upcoming Agatha Christie Festival.

Please visit and subscribe to the podcast's Patreon page by clicking here.

You can buy my debut mystery novel, The Busy Body, at your bookseller of choice in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand.

I mentioned a few different adaptations over the course of this episode. Click below to access them.

Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (Japanese-language animated series)

Murder by the Book (starring Ian Holm and Peggy Ashcroft)

Various BBC radio plays

Viki.com (where you can watch Ms. Ma, Nemesis)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every single
0:10.2	mystery novel written by the Queen of Crime, Dame Agatha Christie.
0:14.6	I am Kemper Donovan and I'm very excited about this episode because this is the second
0:20.6	episode I'm doing that you could make an argument is a little preview for what I will be doing at the Ag of the Christie Festival in Torqui in September when I and a dream team of co-panelists will be crowning Ag of the
0:36.1	Christie's greatest screen adaptation. I'm going to be doing that with Dr Mark Aldridge
0:42.4	with Dr. John Curran, with the best-selling
0:45.8	mystery author Victoria Dowd.
0:47.8	And this year, also joining us will be Teresa Peschel, who just appeared on this podcast a few episodes ago.
0:55.6	She has already written one book in which she reviews various screen adaptations of Agitha Christi's. So she is an expert on the subject and we are all going to be gathering
1:06.8	in Torqui on the evening of Thursday, September 12th at 7 p.m. in the Spanish barn. I'll include a link as I have been doing
1:16.9	for a while now in case you haven't bought tickets. There are more tickets
1:21.6	available. The number keeps dwindling and then getting refreshed new packets of seats become available so perhaps you can snag a ticket if you visit the festival's website.
1:31.6	In that previous episode with Teresa Peschel, we went over our least and most favorite
1:37.5	adaptations of a few different actors who had played Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple.
1:43.4	And I figured it would be really fun
1:45.4	if I did my own little top 10
1:48.9	as to actors out there through time
1:51.1	who have played Monsieur Poirot and the actors who have played Miss Marple.
1:56.0	Before I get into this I want to note that I will be spoiling the Poirot novel
2:01.4	Curtain in the course of this discussion as well as the 2018
2:05.6	of the ABC murders. I will be spoiling something specific to that adaptation.
2:11.0	So if you are concerned about being spoiled for either of those titles, you have been forewarned.
	...

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