Ariadne Oliver was not a "fill in" character as one reviewer here suggested. She was in Agatha Christie's original Elephants Can Remember book and ITV, of course, included her in their TV adaptation. After Colonel Hastings stopped being Poirot's assistant after her 1937 book "Dumb Witness", Agatha Christie chose to eventually appoint Ariadne Oliver as Poirot's new full time assistant from the 1952 Poirot book--Mrs McGinty's Dead--onwards. (Ariadne Oliver did appear in Cards on the Table with Poirot too in 1936 but that was a temporary post) Suchet certainly does not seem out of breath playing Poirot in this film adaptation.
Anyhow, this ITV production does have new elements that were not in Christie's original book such as the Willoughby Institute angle and the murderous Marie McDermott, daughter of Dorothea Jarrow but for the most part I felt the producers tried to stay true to the book such as the fact that Molly Ravenscroft was indeed accidentally killed by her identical sister Dorothea Jarrow. But before dying, Molly asked her husband (General Ravenscroft) to protect her sister (Dorothea) from prosecution. Only the family dog could tell the difference between the identical twins Molly and Dorothea. The Colonel honoured his dead wife's wishes until the final day of reckoning with Dorothea at the cliff.
ITV had to adapt the original book since Elephants Can Remember was Agatha Christie's last Poirot book--from 1972--written when her mental faculties were in decline and she might have been suffering from dementia. John Curran, the Christie specialist, in "Agatha Christie's Murder in the Making" called her book here "a disappointment. Like the books published (by Christie) on either side of it (in the 1970's), there are too many rambling conversations that give the reader little solid information" but are merely repetitious. (Curran, p.394) ITV did a reasonable job of turning a below average book into a good TV adaptation.
Curtain, Christie's published Poirot book from 1975, was written three decades prior to Elephants Can Remember. John Curran who studied Christie's original manuscript for Curtain notes that "the address on the manuscript of Curtain is 'Greenway House', which Christie left in October 1942 on its requisition by the US navy" while one of the typewritten corrections to a notebook containing the manuscript for Curtain "seems to date to the early 1940s." (Curran, pp.211-213) So, Elephants Can Remember was certainly Christie's last written Poirot book since Curtain was actually written by the author in the early 1940's as a final farewell for Poirot.
Anyhow, this ITV production does have new elements that were not in Christie's original book such as the Willoughby Institute angle and the murderous Marie McDermott, daughter of Dorothea Jarrow but for the most part I felt the producers tried to stay true to the book such as the fact that Molly Ravenscroft was indeed accidentally killed by her identical sister Dorothea Jarrow. But before dying, Molly asked her husband (General Ravenscroft) to protect her sister (Dorothea) from prosecution. Only the family dog could tell the difference between the identical twins Molly and Dorothea. The Colonel honoured his dead wife's wishes until the final day of reckoning with Dorothea at the cliff.
ITV had to adapt the original book since Elephants Can Remember was Agatha Christie's last Poirot book--from 1972--written when her mental faculties were in decline and she might have been suffering from dementia. John Curran, the Christie specialist, in "Agatha Christie's Murder in the Making" called her book here "a disappointment. Like the books published (by Christie) on either side of it (in the 1970's), there are too many rambling conversations that give the reader little solid information" but are merely repetitious. (Curran, p.394) ITV did a reasonable job of turning a below average book into a good TV adaptation.
Curtain, Christie's published Poirot book from 1975, was written three decades prior to Elephants Can Remember. John Curran who studied Christie's original manuscript for Curtain notes that "the address on the manuscript of Curtain is 'Greenway House', which Christie left in October 1942 on its requisition by the US navy" while one of the typewritten corrections to a notebook containing the manuscript for Curtain "seems to date to the early 1940s." (Curran, pp.211-213) So, Elephants Can Remember was certainly Christie's last written Poirot book since Curtain was actually written by the author in the early 1940's as a final farewell for Poirot.