Poirot, Episode One:
Charming! Delightful!
Poirot, Final Episode:
Oh, my god, what happened?
Somewhere in season seven, this show took a hard turn. One moment we were figuratively tooling along with Captain Hastings in the English countryside, then the tires squealed and we were in a dark city alley heading toward family abuse and forced abortions.
“I say!” — Hastings.
(I don’t know if he said that. We never actually got to the forced abortions episode.)
Gary writhed and clutched his head so much that we bailed on season seven and we jumped ahead to ten, which caused Gary even more emotional pain, and then we just jumped ahead to the end. The last episode was excellent — just from a plot twist perspective. It was still dreadfully dark.
I read later that Agatha Christie grew to hate the Poirot character. She wrote Curtains, his swan song, and tucked it away to be published after her death, but then published it early. I know the writers adapted the Poirot stories: I wonder if they adapted them in order? I wonder if season seven corresponds to the point in Christie’s life when she had her emotional breakdown and went missing and, I surmise, turned against Hercule?
I might watch the Dark Poirot Reboot episodes without Gary.