Poirot's Forgotten Rival - The Murder on the Links

A comparison of the Agatha Christie novel The Murder on the Links to its 1995 TV film adaptation.
Contains footage from Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.

[@gregdeandrea1450]

This episode has one of my favorite line reads in all of Cinema. When Geraut makes the bet, and mentions Poirot's mustache, Hastings says "You can't be serious..." Fraser reads the line like he just heard that the Joker was going to poison an orphanage with Mustard Gas. He makes it sound like the WORLD IS COMING TO AN END. Its freakin amazing.

[@pearly872]

Hastings can ruin the most well laid out plans for us mere mortals.

[@serinadalmer800]

Personally. I loved this Poirot episode. Hastines found love, Poirot got to best a rival, and lots of twists. Never read the book so the twins was an interesting thing to learn about. Thanks!

[@nothingruler14All]

I like the fact that this version comes much later in the television series than the book did in Agatha Christie's. It makes the romance with Hastings and Bella more satisfying and sweet. You've gotten to know the character a bit and you can't help but feel sorry for him. It's lovely to see him find some happiness.

[@RealLordFuture]

I found this book very confusing and very easy to get lost in the explanation of the crrime. I do love the TV movie version for the same reasons you do. By changing the order of clues found it made the story much easier to follow. I feel that this was very early in Christie's career and shehadn't quite got her style yet.

[@DaleRibbons]

I suspect Geraut may have been a parody of the fictional French detective Inspector Maigret. Like Geraut, he carried a pipe. I haven't read the book so I'm not sure if he's like this there, or if it's something they came up with for the adaptation.

[@animeaction1911]

Maigret didn't appear until 1931, so Geraut predates him. Plus I doubt there was any inspiration for the adaptation, as Maigret is quite a friendly person, at least by comparison

[@MariaVosa]

Yes can you even imagine Poirot shaving off his moustache!? (stares with utter contempt at Branagh's Murder on the Nile)

[@lukacunningham342]

What makes 4:19 funny is that Poirot is wearing gloves but still uses a handkerchief to pick up the pipe 😂

[@lukacunningham342]

Hastings when finding the body in the film: *dang it, I was just enjoying this golf game*

[@lukacunningham342]

And to confuse everyone, this was the second Poirot book Christie ever made but this is actually the third ever book Christie ever made

[@SloanePaoPow]

I so enjoy your videos. Keep up the good work!

[@superspy6]

Completely agree on your comments on "shenanigans" during the climax, I was completely expecting one final revelation that never came!

[@stefaniekuzminski9575]

Nice job! Very enjoyable analysis!

[@lukacunningham342]

PushingUpRoses just released a new episode just at the same time but I thought you deserve attention first, I am a big Agatha Christie fan myself!

[@MaryanaMaskar]

What a lovely day it is! 😊

[@RIDDLE0MASTER]

I read the book after watching this episode, so imagine my surprise discovering that there were twin sisters!

[@SloanePaoPow]

Oooh! Endless Night! The movie adaptation with Hayley Mills is so 1970s

[@lukacunningham342]

I really like Hastings, in fact, I have two collections on my shelf: One half of it is all eight Poirot books Hastings narrated and on the other: all four Holmes novels Watson narrated

[@margaretalbrecht4650]

I like the way the series added Hastings into a lot of stories.

[@Joy-z6g]

I never much cared for Book Hastings. But TV/Film Hastings - as portrayed by Hugh Fraser - gave him rather more depth than just being the dumb sidekick. And that, in turn, made me appreciate Book Hastings more!

[@MadameChristie]

Ooooooh. Excited for Endless Night. You talking both the Marple episode and the standalone 80s movie or just one of them?

[@MysteryMiles]

Mainly the Marple.

[@MadameChristie]

​​@@MysteryMilescool. You know, you could argue that Endless Night is actually a Marple story since almost the same exact plot was used/reused for a Marple short story.

[@brianbommarito3376]

Geraut seems like a loose but obvious parody of Sherlock Holmes. As much as I love Holmes, he does seem to have a slight touch of arrogance to him, which would certainly rub Poirot the wrong way if the two of them ever happened to meet. Christie ratcheted up Geraut’s arrogance almost to max, and made him extremely rude. Holmes can be rude on occasion, but mostly he’s just straightforward. He has no patience for small-talk. Geraut is rude just for the sake of being rude. Narcissistic to the point of being almost anti-social. Holmes and Geraut share many of Holmes’ superficial habits. The pipe-smoking, the fondness for forensics.

[@cynthia7445]

I found your channel recently and I'm enjoying your reviews. RE: this story, it is not one of my favorites and the Suchet rendition is even worse.

[@58christiansful]

Wonderful analysis. The moustache/pipe forfeit is one of the sillinesses script-writer that were introduced into the Poirot episodes. Another was is the stuffed alligator Hastings brings with him from the Argentine in the ABC Murders. Too silly in an UN-amusing way, at least for me. No doubt the masses laugh. The main offender was the late script-writer Clive Exton who frequently introduced car chases at the end of episodes. But Anthony Horowitz (who is the better writer) is also guilty of lapses. There is one particularly obnoxious episode - Hickory Dickory Dock - scripted by Horowitz - where Japp talks about ‘faggots’ (the dish, English meatballs) while looking at Poirot - and then re refers to ‘spotted dick’ ( the quintessentially English dessert), which shocks Poirot etc. etc. Agatha would never.

[@fredrikcarlstedt393]

Good Lord I Say !

[@Unownshipper]

I thought the Murder on the Links adaptation was pretty good, but too effective in the character of Giraud. I honestly find him insufferably pompous... to an unfun degree. I suppose that's a point in his actor's favor, but it doesn't make me eager for a rewatch. 6:24 As for Agatha Christie's romances, "weird" works but I think they we going for "melodramatic." Maybe it was her choice, maybe her publisher pushed her, but they all come off as the sort of contrived, fantastical scenarios of harlequin romance novels. I liked Bella Duveen, but even though she's mentioned once or twice, I thought it was a real shame Jacinta Mulcahy never appeared again.

[@vulpes82]

Christie was also a romance writer, though she went under the nom de plume "Mary Westmacott" in that aspect of her career, and I think she incorporated a lot of that into her mysteries, to not always stellar effect. But also, I really don't know, but I would guess that the conventions and tropes of romance back then were at least somewhat different and come off strangely to us. And/or maybe Christie just wasn't as good a romance writer as she was a mystery novelist! I've never heard her work in that genre as considered "classic" or anything; they're really only notable still because it was her writing them.

[@tiararoxeanne1318]

I like the romance in Agatha Christie's work. I think Sad Cypress is very romantic. The way Christie described the heroine's feeling towards her fiance is exactly like how I feel when I fall in love. I never know that someone could describe my feeling so accurately. But maybe I'm an outlier. After all, I consider The Terminator movie as romantic😂

[@Unownshipper]

@@vulpes82 Wow, I didn't know that. Definitetly think you're right about the tropes of that era coming off as bizarre nowadays.

[@vulpes82]

@@tiararoxeanne1318 I don't think you're such an outlier. Her romances work, sometimes. It's just sometimes they really don't. And I know a lot of people find The Terminator romantic.

[@Phantomex6303]

Can you please make a Video on Benoit Blanc? 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

[@jfsredhead]

i thought the stories in poirot investigates were after this and this only 2nd case

[@MysteryMiles]

This was the second book to be published, but chronologically the bulk of the short stories take place in between the two. :)

[@vulpes82]

For once, I really have almost nothing to say! No queerness to comment on, and neither a book nor adaptation I've either enjoyed or revisited since I first read/saw them. The only thing I have to say is that, as much as I love Hugh Fraser as Hastings, I never bought any of his infatuations and romances. He's the very prototype of a sexless Englishman. And while that's right, it does make buying him falling for anyone hard. (I also think Fraser's Hastings is a bit more of a buffoon than the way Christie quite wrote the character, but that'll wait for a different video.)

[@MysteryMiles]

Your last point is really interesting! Because yes, Fraser's Hastings is more of a buffoon than book Hastings, but I'm also pretty sure he's less of an idiot. At any rate I find him less frustrating. You're making me think! :)

[@vulpes82]

@@MysteryMiles You see, I don't find Book Hastings an idiot, exactly. He's direct; he sees what is in front of him, not the "psychology." And he has the English prejudice towards action and correct procedure rather than contemplation and slant angles. Christie wrote him to contrast Poirot's methods; it's even one reason Poirot likes him: he knows that whatever Hastings thinks is what "most people" would think, and therefore, what killers WANT people to think to hide themselves. But Fraser sometimes acts like he's been hit in the head too many times.

[@elgar104]

It's a good episode.... but the actor playing Giraud is a little am dram.

[@MultipleMike-tl2ty]

I always felt that Poirot was never truly challenged intellectually in any way (with his final book being a possible exception). The police and the villains are almost always too stupid to really match him or exceed him. Made for a very boring experience after a while because you knew he would always win. This poor fat sleuth with the pipe has no chance of upstaging him. At every turn he was made to be less appealing and inferior. I felt at times that Christie was mocking Simenon’s maigret with this character who was French and also smoked a pipe. Poirot was good, but he could’ve been so much better if Christie would’ve shown more of his flaws and had him lose more often.

[@margaretalbrecht4650]

Of course Poirot always figures it out. Doesn't mean he doesn't get stumped until fairly late in the plot. In Peril at End House, the murderer had Poirot fooled for quite a long time. He only solved Lord Edgeware Dies because of someone else's chance remark.

[@MultipleMike-tl2ty]

Which is part of the problem. I don’t want him to figure it out every time, it’s very unrealistic and boring. The murderer is always defeated at the end and it’s never that big of a struggle for him. Of course he is stumped for a while, but he always wins. It’s boring. I’d much rather see him be tested in such a way that we doubt he can really beat the baddie because the baddie is BETTER than him.

[@margaretalbrecht4650]

@@MultipleMike-tl2ty That's not how whodunnits work. You'd have a horde of angry mystery fans if that happened in a Christie. But, you might like Tana French's "In the Woods" if you haven't read it. You'll come out ignorant of what happened in one of the mysteries. That's what you want.

[@MultipleMike-tl2ty]

Eh, I know how whodunnits work but I still feel that the formula can be improved upon. It’s much more fascinating when the hero and the villain are evenly matched and even if the villain is smarter than the hero but loses due to his own arrogance. anyway, poirot is fine, but that was always a problem I had with the series even if I can still enjoy them for what they are

[@fliksc9786]

@@MultipleMike-tl2ty hmm... this sounds like Curtain... the formula doesn't need improved... they are 2 different formulas.. It is like Game of thrones and Lord of The Rings. Both operate with diffferent amounts of reality, but the concepts explored are also different.... Poirot doesn't explore the villians but the crime and heroes. Maigret explores the characters not the crime... different things.

[@pearly872]

This terribly written episode has a number of flaws, the story itself is a mess with many "letdowns" throughout. Since it's very old and the series is complete and now used for "ads only" it's hardly worth watching much less enjoying, it's sad that the internet now rivals if not surpasses the relentless advertising on TV, and now most viewers are forced to look elsewhere for adequate entertainment.

[@davidhardwick3816]

I'm really enjoying your channel - interesting and astute analyses in every video. Thanks for posting!