Well, then.

Of all the episodes I knew we were going to cover here, this is the one I was dreading the most, because… well…

Oof, this is tough.

Adaptations, as we all know, are tricky beasts. Stay too faithful to the source material and you risk the audience wondering what the point of it all was, anyway. Veer too far off course and you’ve alienated the very audience most inclined to appreciate what you’ve done. So right off the bat, you’ve got a built-in degree of difficulty. Obviously it’s possible to succeed, though, as we’ve seen in tons of great mystery television series and movies.

Factor in an adaptation of a mystery, and now you’ve got to solve an additional problem – your target audience arguably already knows whodunnit – the discovery of which is usually the central draw of the genre –  and so plot-wise there’s limited room to surprise. Oh, perhaps you can tinker with motive, or if you’re particularly daring change a bunch of stuff, but by and large you’re betting your chips on a particularly well-acted or directed execution. Again – not impossible, but a little bit harder than adapting, say, Romeo and Juliet or Moby-Dick.

Now pile on top of those hurdles the fact that you’re making an adaptation of one of the most famous mystery novels ever written, read by millions for nigh on a hundred years(!!!). Still though – almost everyone has a favorite flavor of Murder on the Orient Express (mine is Lumet’s, but we’ll save that discussion for another five series) so clearly different interpretations of character and setting can still work to entertain even those religiously familiar with the source material. On the other hand, you’re also setting yourself up for a potential dumpster fire like the recent Malkovich-ified ABC Murders.

And this is where attempting to adapt “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” is, in my opinion, like pulling out one Jenga brick too many from the tower.

Because its central conceit, its raison d’etre, its claim to fame that makes it such a brilliant, unexpected, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you detective story and one of the most influential crime novels ever written… is the same thing that makes any adaptation utterly devoid of interest to almost anyone who knows what’s coming.

The rest of this is almost entirely spoilery, because you can’t talk about this particular episode otherwise.

[spoiler title = “Grey Cells:”]I suppose one could make a version of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” where the village doctor – venomous, jealous, spiteful, arrogant  – isn’t the killer. And one could even make a version of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” where the ostensible narrator/sidekick doesn’t turn out to be the killer all along.

But then you’d have to admit that what you made… wasn’t really “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” at all, now, was it? And therein lies the rub.

Hope y’all brought an appetite, because I’m about to grill up some Sacred Cow Burgers!

Outside of that glorious, genre-bending, infuriatingly clever swerve, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is really rather pedestrian Christie, plot-wise. It’s clever, to be sure – few of even her least works aren’t at least a little clever – but it’s nothing mind-blowing on its own. There’s a bit of fiddle-faddling with time, and misdirection with overheard conversations and the usual ulterior motives, but ultimately this is a plot we’ve seen (and will see) again and again, without even a particularly intriguing clue or inventive death to string us along. Even Poirot himself is a bit weird in this, being rather harsh in his estimation of his missing companion Hastings.  What I’m saying is that outside of the reveal that it’s  being narrated by a sociopath, there’s at least four or five Christies I’d recommend before this one.

But oh, that reveal.

Dame Agatha found a way to make it so much more than a Marple in Belgian clothing by upending expectations, by making a trusted source – the narrator, the detective’s sidekick, the stand-in for the reader, for God’s sake – the villain of the piece.  The gimmick is in the medium itself, in the interaction between the reader and the printed word. And once you see that, you can’t unsee it, no matter if Sir Larry Olivier himself were playing the role of Doc Sheppard. It renders any dramatization devoid of actual drama.

Which is why I found myself with the shortest page of notes I’ve ever taken on one of these episodes, barely ten or fifteen lines’ worth –  half an hour in, I just stopped, because if you’ve read the book, none of the rest of it matters. You’ve seen the fastball. Any other depiction outside of that first, virginal experience is just a facsimile, hearsay, or a poorly-described thirdhand account. If you’d never read the book and this episode was your first encounter with the story, you’d rightly wonder what all the fuss was about.

And if you have read the book, you’d wonder why in blue hell they cut out all the best bits (Sheppard’s interactions with his sister Caroline – something of a proto-Marple herself, Mrs. Ackroyd’s goofiness, making Ackroyd himself less sympathetic) and added stupid ones (Sheppard running over the butler – twice! – with a car, bringing in Japp, which effectively renders Sheppard just another incredibly obvious suspect, a chase and gun battle followed by suicide at the end). It’s destined to please nobody.

Lord knows they tried to keep the “narrator did it” aspect with Poirot recounting events as told in Sheppard’s journal (a reveal that’s once again botched for newcomers by relentlessly telegraphing it right at the point when it should have been revealed out of nowhere  – or, you know, at the end – for maximum surprise), but it’s… just not a good episode, even putting aside what it’s trying to adapt – which, again, is impossible.

I think perhaps the best they could have done would have been to go all-in on Sheppard as a narrator in voiceover the entire episode, and ditched the journal conceit entirely, without inserting Japp into a story he didn’t need to be in. I don’t know. Look, nobody’s asking for Double Indemnity or The Usual Suspects in a Poirot episode, but… come on. Everyone’s already in on the gag here. Why play coy about it?[/spoiler]

Interestingly, this series didn’t air until about 4 years after the close of series 6 – I’m guessing this is when the A&E network picked up the rights and financing with ITV to continue the adventures of our favorite Belgian. And it’s clear that in-universe time has passed as well; Poirot has been retired for a year or so, and has given up Whitehaven Mansions for King’s Abbot in order to grow vegetable marrows in the sort of village you’d expect to find Miss Marple traipsing around in.

And it shows! Poirot’s moustache has grown fuller, and stretches to the ends of his mouth now. Japp’s put on a few pounds and somehow looks even world-wearier than usual (though Philip Jackson probably looked forty-five at his eighth birthday party). Perhaps the best sequence in the entire episode is a short trip back to the dust-covered furniture of Poirot’s old apartment at Whitehaven, where he talks of ghosts and we can see in Suchet’s face the baggage of all the clients he’s failed over the years and the burden of one too many warnings unheeded. (Interestingly, none of this is in the book.)

So in the end, I can’t particularly recommend “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” to anyone; if you’ve not read the book, go read the book. If you have read the book, then… you’ve read the book! Great! There’s no earthly reason to bother with this, because it fails to expand, illuminate, dramatize, or live up to its source in any conceivable way.

How could it do otherwise?

Also telling: the full introductory credit sequence and theme is gone, replaced instead by a brief logo and a single strain of the now-familiar theme. You can absolutely see the direction this series will be taking in just another series or two: more serious, less whimsical, darker in tone as Poirot begins to reckon with a life spent ferreting out evil. Look, the series still has legitimately great moments and episodes ahead, believe me. And the coming turn into darkness is one that sees Suchet performing at his absolute apex with more complex, psychological material.

But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.

Next Week, on Poirot: A beautiful actress! A tyrant of a husband! A dinner party! And a credible butler suspect! There’s Thirteen at Dinner when… “Lord Edgware Dies”!