{"id":12248,"date":"2015-05-09T00:01:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T06:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=12248"},"modified":"2015-05-08T20:04:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T02:04:24","slug":"telefilm-review-curtain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/telefilm-review-curtain\/","title":{"rendered":"Telefilm Review: Curtain"},"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 \/>\nCurtain is a story many don\u2019t want to read and don\u2019t want to see. It\u2019s Poirot\u2019s last tale, the story in which Poirot meets his final end.<\/p>\n<p>Poirot returns to Styles, where he solved his first great English case decades before. This is a different Poirot as far as we can tell, an invalid with a new valet whose days are numbered. Yet, he\u2019s got one more case to solve and he turns (with reluctance) to his oldest and dearest friend, Captain Hastings.<\/p>\n<p>David Suchet turns in a superb performance as this much older, ailing, and far less sunny Poirot. He\u2019s more grumpy and snaps at Captain Hastings, who he has no choice but to depend on. Despite his inability to observe as he once did, it\u2019s clear the little gray cells are still working.<\/p>\n<p>Hugh Frasier delivers a great performance as Captain Hastings, no longer the dim-witted sidekick, he&#8217;s charged with grief over the death of his wife, with concern for Poirot, and with his daughter\u2019s coldness and involvement with an amoral man. Hasting is driven to his limit and Frasier plays this beautifully, taking advantage of a script that makes Hastings a far juicier part than the typical comic sidekick.<\/p>\n<p>The mystery itself is unusual. It\u2019s hard to follow or to even figure out if there\u2019s a pattern to what\u2019s going on until we get the solution. Then the nature of the evil Poirot faces is exposed, and we\u2019re brought face to face with the shocking choice to make at the end of his days.<\/p>\n<p>Poirot\u2019s final scene is beautifully done, as he\u2019s a man dying hoping only for forgiveness. It\u2019s only later that we learn what for.<\/p>\n<p>Curtain is a solid production, and probably the best of the season.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve enjoyed the entire series, and mystery fans own a large debt of gratitude to David Suchet, who didn\u2019t come to Poirot of remaking him, rather Suchet has said that he understood his job as an actor was to serve the writer (and in the case of the Poirot stories, his creator) by bringing the character to life as they intended it. His job was to truly to be Agatha Christie\u2019s Poirot. While there are quite a few adaptations (particularly in Series 9 and 10) where the story was often very different from Christie\u2019s vision, in all of these tales, Suchet remained superb and succeeded in being Agatha Christie\u2019s Poirot.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 4.5 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 delivered\u00a0<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\">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>Curtain is a story many don\u2019t want to read and don\u2019t want to see. It\u2019s Poirot\u2019s last tale, the story in which Poirot meets his final end. Poirot returns to Styles, where he solved his first great English case decades before. This is a different Poirot as far as we can tell, an invalid with&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[123,118,248],"tags":[366,365,359],"class_list":["post-12248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golden-age-article","category-hercule-poirot","category-telefilm-review","tag-death-of-a-hero","tag-final-curtain","tag-good-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-3by","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12248","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=12248"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12282,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12248\/revisions\/12282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}