Sextet
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- June
- 19
Just in time for summer vacation — or rather in this economy, a summer vacation of the mind — comes “Six by Agatha” — six tales by Agatha Christie on PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery!” that mark the return of David Suchet as Hercule Poirot while Julia McKenzie takes over from Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple. The two Poirots air on this Sunday and next (9 p.m. THIRTEEN locally) while the Marples take up Sundays in July.
I’m pulling up by beach chair and pouring myself a tall pomegranate lemonade, so to speak.Really, this stuff is so good it needs no review. But a couple of points. To say it is as if we just saw David Suchet’s Poirot yesterday is to say how easily he slips back into the bowler, the spats, the little upturned mustache, the penquin waddle, the skewered English syntax, the references to himself in the third person. (I interviewed him some years back when he played a particularly malevolent Salieri on Broadway to Michael Sheen’s transcendent Mozart in “Amadeus.” I found Suchet to be as charming and erudite a lunch companion as he is a masterful performer.)
But that’s the thing about the Brits: They know their craft. They have a life outside of acting. And they understand there are no small parts, only small actors. Among the players in the series that you’ll recognize from other, bigger roles are Joan Collins, Natalie Dormer, Rupert Graves, David Haig, Matthew MacFadyen, Prunella Scales and Zoë Wanamaker.
As for McKenzie, who starred in “Cranford,” her Marple is more solid than the fragile-looking McEwan, but also less romantic and more wistful. The producers have done away with the allusions to Miss Marple’s tragic, romantic past. (Well, not everything relates to your own experience, does it?) In its place is a kind of luridness I didn’t realize was part of the Christie repertoire. One case alone features incest, rape and several murders; another, heroin addiction and child prostitution. Thank goodness these things are discussed rather than shown. (I particularly love it when the murderers stop in mid-crime to listen to Poirot or Marple explain how they did it.)
Once again Alan Cumming is back as host. In introducing Poirot, he describes him as the unmarried Belgian detective, emphasis on “unmarried,” with eyebrows arched.
Oh, Alan, you’re such a scamp!
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 6:00 am by Georgette Gouveia.
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