BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Prismark10 This is a rather atmospheric production, the director has gone for moody shots to reflect a story where justice might have gone wrong as a young woman, Lucy Crale contacts Poirot to find out how her father, an artist dies 14 years earlier, a crime for which her mother was executed for and an incident which has always haunted her as she was a little girl at the time.Lucy's father, Amyas was a womaniser, her mother, Caroline apparently put up with his philandering ways. His latest conquest was Elsa, a wealthy woman he was painting and who he had promised that he will leave his wife for.The story is told in flashback as Poirot talks to various people who were present including family members, this leads to some unreliable narrators which Poirot has to fathom.At one point a character tells Poirot to get on with it. An intriguing mystery but it does rather drag a bit which is always tends to be the case with feature length Poirot mysteries, hence the moody shots. Yet it did keep you guessing as to who is the culprit but I am not sure that it all hangs together well.

runsfast2002 I watched this episode as I was reading the book for the umpteenth time. In many ways it is remarkably faithful to the book, at times taking scenes and dialogue straight from the pages. It's times like this, when an adaptation is so faithful, that it makes any variance seem either unnecessary or puzzling. For instance, in the book "Lucy" is named Carla, Caroline Crale dies in prison but is not executed, Elsa is 20 instead of 18, the events happened 16 years ago instead of 14, and Philip Blake was in love with Caroline, not Amyas, when he was young and hated her because she did not return his love. There is also an extra scene at the end where Lucy confronts the real killer with a gun but, as another reader pointed out, this is more of a tense psychological moment that works here but would have seemed over-dramatic in the book. All the characters were very much how I pictured them, and David Suchet was wonderful as usual. All in all, a very enjoyable episode with some puzzling variations.

bovnyccc Unlike some of the adaptations of Christie' s Poirot, this was very true to the novel. There were a few melodramatic moments in this production that were not true to the novel but they were minor.This is one of the Christie novels where the characterizations were at the heart of the tale. The close-up of all the major characters showed not only how much they suffered from the events of the past but how hollow they had become. It seemed, even in death, the husband and wife were more dynamic than those who orbited around them.The acting was fabulous and Suchet' s Poirot showed subtlety and charm and happily, few of the affectation s he sometimes employed with his quarry and I think Rachael Stirling,as Caroline Crayle was first among equals.This show affected me greatly and won't soon be forgotten.

TheLittleSongbird I saw this when it first aired in 2003, when I was 11, and I was very impressed, really I was. Two years ago, I read the book, and I personally think the book is up there among the best with Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia. What impressed me most with the TV adaptation, which I got on video recently, was that some of the scenes, like the hanging scene, were genuinely haunting, and that's what I want to feel in a mystery. The music score gave that haunted feeling and some poignancy, in an already complicated story. As far as I can remember, the overall structure was faithful to the book, and I also liked the actress of Caroline Crale, as you really feel for her, and Amias was certainly hissable here in the way they made him behave. Marc Warren and Gemma Jones also do well as Meridith and Mrs Williams. Also what the writers got right were Angela's disfigurement and although it was changed, the ending with Lucy in the lovely dress was very effective. As ever, David Suchet is impeccable as Hercule Poirot, and he is helped by a brooding script. However there were two things I didn't like about the adaptation- the idea of Blake being homosexual(I don't think that was in the book), and Julie Cox was perhaps too old for Elsa. All in all, technically and visually it's a delight to look at, and I enjoyed this adaptation very much, though I do prefer the book. 9/10 Bethany Cox.