{"id":12198,"date":"2015-05-02T00:01:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T06:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=12198"},"modified":"2015-04-24T19:58:06","modified_gmt":"2015-04-25T01:58:06","slug":"telefilm-review-labours-hercules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/telefilm-review-labours-hercules\/","title":{"rendered":"Telefilm Review: The Labours of Hercules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B00GWXI16O&amp;asins=B00GWXI16O&amp;linkId=3RVNFXN3KX27RHJ3&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><br \/>\nA few years back<br \/>\nThe first thing to understand about the ITV telefilm, <em>The Labours of Hercule<\/em>s is that it really couldn\u2019t be faithful to the book as a whole the way it was produced.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Labours of Hercules<\/em> wasn\u2019t really an Agatha Christie novel (see my review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/book-review-labours-hercules\/\">here<\/a>.). It was a short story collection with an overarching theme. Where Poirot, prior to retirement, sought out to cap his career by re-enacting the Labours of Hercules. In truth, this should have been adapted as another season of hour-long adventures, as that\u2019s how previous Christie short stories were handled.<\/p>\n<p>But instead we have a ninty minute telefilm that must be evaluated on its own merits. After failing to catch a jewel thief who also commits murders for the sheer pleasure of it, Poirot is not well. He\u2019d promised a young woman she\u2019d been safe, but instead she\u2019d fallen victim to the jewel thief along with a man who had been attending the same party.<\/p>\n<p>Poirot is depressed, but decides to do something positive by helping his hired driver find his true love, and goes to Switzerland to do so and finds himself in the same hotel as the thief and murderer who defeated him in London. Poirot seeks to catch the killer, but finds more than his usual share of red herrings as the hotel is full of people hiding things and mysteries. In the book, Poirot solves these mysteries across Great Britain and the Continent, but the production is pretty clever in putting as many of these cases from the as possible, literally \u201cunder one roof.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The direction in the film is fantastic, and the Chateau setting is gorgeous and atmospheric. It\u2019s a very well-told and engaging mystery that borrows from the book, but has its own tale to tell.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing that bothers me about is the tonal shift from the book. As a book, <em>The Labours of Hercules<\/em> is a fun collection of tales about Poirot deciding to cap his amazing career by replicating the original Labors of Hercules. It\u2019s eccentric and light reading. This telefilm \u00a0is much darker, and it\u2019s about Poirot\u2019s failure and his struggle for redemption and the fact that his life can often be quite lonely. In many ways, this film serves sets the tone for the final story, Curtain.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, even though this isn\u2019t the <em>Labours of Hercules<\/em> as I\u2019d really like to have it made (and I doubt, given the increasingly dark tone of our entertainment, such a production will ever be made), it\u2019s good for what it is: an atmospheric mystery that sets up the series finale and Poirot\u2019s last case.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0<\/p>\n<p><em>If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B004U8SET2\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=adamsblog03-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B004U8SET2\">delivered automatically to your Kindle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post at no extra cost to the purchase<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years back The first thing to understand about the ITV telefilm, The Labours of Hercules is that it really couldn\u2019t be faithful to the book as a whole the way it was produced. The Labours of Hercules wasn\u2019t really an Agatha Christie novel (see my review here.). It was a short story collection&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,248],"tags":[165,359],"class_list":["post-12198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golden-age-article","category-hercule-poirot","category-telefilm-review","tag-agatha-christie","tag-good-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-3aK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12198"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12202,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12198\/revisions\/12202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}