To be fair, ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER (the novel) is one of the last full-length Poirot cases (Dame Agatha penned CURTAIN, published after her death, decades earlier) and it's pretty thin on the ground. I guessed the ending and I don't even play the game. I read the best mystery writers for their style (Stout, Carr, Allingham) rather than their mysteries. Besides, with Christie, who wrote books where the most obvious suspect, and the one the police arrest, did it; where the narrator did it; where everyone did it; where no one did it . . . who can really second-guess her? Well, in this case, as I say, I did.
Therefore, though writers were trying to one-up Christie already by introducing extraneous characters, subplots, and even different endings (!), "Elephants Can Remember" (the television episode) needed a little help. The actual murder investigated was a dull affair that took place fifteen years earlier in a series of blurry flash-backs (with a modern version of back-projection that would make Cary Grant shudder), so more immediacy was needed. So they added a totally new murder, and a mysterious American. Why an American? Apparently so they'll have someone say "g--d---." They like having Americans say that. But the fact is, speaking as an American, the clues the writer(s) gave that she wasn't all she claimed were fairly obvious, though I won't give them away.
The best part of the show was seeing whatever happened to former sexpot Gretta Scacchi, who in the '80s made flicks where she had gratuitous nudity, and pulled it off (so to speak) very well. She provides welcome comic relief, as if Suchet's Poirot and Wanamaker's Oliver weren't silly enough.
SPOILER: The biggest mystery for those familiar with the book is, "What's that American chick doing in this?" In fact, though I won't say exactly what, her appearance undercuts the decade-and-a-half of secrecy that surrounded the earlier murders (or was it murder-suicide or suicide-suicide?) and renders the conspiracy of silence null and void. It simply pads out an otherwise straight-forward mystery that could have been covered in a short story rather than a novel, but in a way that makes no sense on any level.
Perhaps because the original novel is one of Christie's weakest, they pushed this one off to the last series of "Poirot" along with their dreadful version of "The Big Four" and the travesty of "The Labors of Hercules" (if they say they did all the Poirot stories, they lie) and "Dead Man's Folly"--one of the best since they dropped Hastings, Japp and Lemon.
In fact, the pretense that "Poirot" was Christie-accurate has always been a fib. The very presence of Lemon, Hastings and Japp together in all the stories, usually with some jokey framing subplot, makes this series a far cry from the beauty of, say, Jeremy Brett's "Sherlock Holmes." Many of the best early stories of the series (say, "The Third Floor Flat") take enormous liberties while some (my favorite is "Peril at End House") have a solid source to work from. The question is whether these liberties, which usually clarify situations, add action or help the individual episodes reach their requisite length, are sufficiently Christie-esque. In the most egregious examples (I won't name them because they've actually changed the killer or the motive) the writers are just trying to show off.
"Elephants Can Remember" needed more mystery than Christie gave it, and the viewer keeps guessing all the way through what the purpose of some characters and events are for, mainly because the writers pulled solutions out of their hats at the end (like the play within a play in "The Third Floor Flat"). It's not fair play, but Christie occasionally cheated.
The young women are lovely, the elder-statesmen females are funny. The mystery actually driving the story is taken from the book, it's only at the mental institution where things go off kilter. They had a weak book that needed a few extra puppets. Still, because it's so easy to foresee the mystery at its heart, "Elephants" is a weak entry in the series; and, in this instance, Christie earns the blame rather than young-punk writers who think they're better than she.
Therefore, though writers were trying to one-up Christie already by introducing extraneous characters, subplots, and even different endings (!), "Elephants Can Remember" (the television episode) needed a little help. The actual murder investigated was a dull affair that took place fifteen years earlier in a series of blurry flash-backs (with a modern version of back-projection that would make Cary Grant shudder), so more immediacy was needed. So they added a totally new murder, and a mysterious American. Why an American? Apparently so they'll have someone say "g--d---." They like having Americans say that. But the fact is, speaking as an American, the clues the writer(s) gave that she wasn't all she claimed were fairly obvious, though I won't give them away.
The best part of the show was seeing whatever happened to former sexpot Gretta Scacchi, who in the '80s made flicks where she had gratuitous nudity, and pulled it off (so to speak) very well. She provides welcome comic relief, as if Suchet's Poirot and Wanamaker's Oliver weren't silly enough.
SPOILER: The biggest mystery for those familiar with the book is, "What's that American chick doing in this?" In fact, though I won't say exactly what, her appearance undercuts the decade-and-a-half of secrecy that surrounded the earlier murders (or was it murder-suicide or suicide-suicide?) and renders the conspiracy of silence null and void. It simply pads out an otherwise straight-forward mystery that could have been covered in a short story rather than a novel, but in a way that makes no sense on any level.
Perhaps because the original novel is one of Christie's weakest, they pushed this one off to the last series of "Poirot" along with their dreadful version of "The Big Four" and the travesty of "The Labors of Hercules" (if they say they did all the Poirot stories, they lie) and "Dead Man's Folly"--one of the best since they dropped Hastings, Japp and Lemon.
In fact, the pretense that "Poirot" was Christie-accurate has always been a fib. The very presence of Lemon, Hastings and Japp together in all the stories, usually with some jokey framing subplot, makes this series a far cry from the beauty of, say, Jeremy Brett's "Sherlock Holmes." Many of the best early stories of the series (say, "The Third Floor Flat") take enormous liberties while some (my favorite is "Peril at End House") have a solid source to work from. The question is whether these liberties, which usually clarify situations, add action or help the individual episodes reach their requisite length, are sufficiently Christie-esque. In the most egregious examples (I won't name them because they've actually changed the killer or the motive) the writers are just trying to show off.
"Elephants Can Remember" needed more mystery than Christie gave it, and the viewer keeps guessing all the way through what the purpose of some characters and events are for, mainly because the writers pulled solutions out of their hats at the end (like the play within a play in "The Third Floor Flat"). It's not fair play, but Christie occasionally cheated.
The young women are lovely, the elder-statesmen females are funny. The mystery actually driving the story is taken from the book, it's only at the mental institution where things go off kilter. They had a weak book that needed a few extra puppets. Still, because it's so easy to foresee the mystery at its heart, "Elephants" is a weak entry in the series; and, in this instance, Christie earns the blame rather than young-punk writers who think they're better than she.