Why, Oh Why, Do I Keep Watching Adaptations of Agatha Christie?

They always disappoint me.

I had thought, back when I bewailed the unnecessary Nazis in At Bertram’s Hotel—173 days ago, apparently—that the Poirot adaptations were more accurate than the Miss Marple ones.

But now I’m watching After the Funeral, and I’m not so sure.

So far, they’ve already removed one of Richard Abernethy’s siblings, making the unreliable nephew George the son of Helen, instead of her nephew.

And they’ve disinherited him, for no reason.

They’ve removed another of Richard Abernethy’s siblings, making Susan (now Susanna) and Rosamund sisters instead of cousins.

And they’ve made Cora’s late husband an Italian instead of a Frenchman. She’s Mrs Gallachio (or something along those lines: I haven’t seen the actual spelling) rather than Mrs Lansqueset.

And they’ve introduced the theft of the deeds of Enderby, Abernethy’s house, making its sale impossible, which adds an apparently unnecessary sub-plot.

Oh, dear: now George has just woken up on a park bench being licked by a Labrador (not a euphemism) and Susanna is haranguing a congregation on the subject of foreign missions. I think I miss the Susan who was a keen businesswoman, planning on opening her own emporium to capitalise on her own and her husband’s strengths.

I don’t think I need to mark that as a spoiler, because I doubt this is going to follow the book’s plot too closely. Susanna, for example, is unmarried, and apparently both inappropriately involved with her cousin George and also planning on sailing to Africa to pursue her work with foreign missions.

So far the most interesting point in this adaptation., from my perspective, is the fact that George Abernethy is Michael Fassbender, who was a Spartan whose name I’ve forgotten in 300 and the fallen angel in Hex. But that’s not why I’m interested in seeing him. Rather, it’s because the name Fassbender has reminded me of Ruth Rendell’s Put On By Cunning, in which the plot turns on the fact that “fassbender” is, apparently, the German term for a cooper. (At least I think it was German; it sounds German. I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong.)

It’s made me think that at least I might be able to wile away the time during the programme thinking of slightly better crime fiction.

And yet Christie really is very good.

So why? Why on earth do they make these changes?

I would have thought that Christie’s plots were ideally designed for adaptation to the television. They’re cunning, but she prides herself on setting everything out for the reader, for all she may employ sleight of hand to draw the reader’s attention away from the main points.

So why these broad, sweeping changes? And, something that irritates me even more, the minor changes, like adjusting Mrs Lansqueset’s surname? It seems so unnecessary.

I once went to see Troy with Nick and a friend. I gave up on the film at the point at which (spoiler! but it’s a bad film) Menelaus died. But, after the film, I pointed out that Menelaus’s death was the point at which the whole thing became thoroughly absurd, but our friend disagreed, saying it was liberating: “You didn’t know what was going to happen next!”

I admire that kind of optimism. But I can’t put it into practice myself.

Why, oh why, if you must write plots involving Nazis, murderous nuns, or drunken, disinherited gamblers, do do you not present them as brand new mysteries? Why tell us it’s Christie, and get all our hopes up?

Oh, I know: saying that it’s Agatha Christie brings in a certain audience who, by the time they realise the plot’s gone haywire, are already committed to watching the rest of the programme.

But it disappoints me every, every time.