---
title: "Agatha Christie's Poirot"
year: 1989
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/agatha-christies-poirot"
fi1m_id: "agatha-christies-poirot"
imdb_id: "tt0094525"
tmdb_id: 790
wikidata_id: "Q391101"
fi1m_score: 83
critics_reviews: 1
published: "2026-10-07T11:24:39.114327+00:00"
updated: "2026-10-07T11:25:08.118012+00:00"
region: "CA"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989)

Created by Edward Bennett, Andrew Grieve, Renny Rye, Brian Farnham, Ashley Pearce, Andy Wilson, Richard Spence, Andrew Piddington, Hettie Macdonald, Charles Palmer, Ross Devenish, John Bruce, Peter Barber-Fleming, Ken Grieve, Sarah Harding, Paul Unwin, John Strickland, Maurice Phillips, Simon Langton, David Moore, Tom Clegg, Peter Lydon, Stephen Whittaker, Dan Reed, Tom Vaughan, Philip Martin, James Kent · 50m · CHVRS G · Crime, Drama, Mystery

## Identity

Agatha Christie's Poirot

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/agatha-christies-poirot
- **Type:** Series
- **Fi1m ID:** agatha-christies-poirot
- **IMDb ID:** tt0094525
- **TMDB ID:** 790
- **Wikidata ID:** Q391101
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094525/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/790, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q391101

**Fi1m score: 83** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* Seventy murders, one moustache, and the cutlery straightened every single time before anyone is accused

> Twenty-four years, seventy murders and one performance holding it all up. David Suchet plays Poirot as a man whose fussiness is a kind of morality, and the series around him, uneven as it gets, never lets him down for long.

## Synopsis

London between the wars. Hercule Poirot (David Suchet), a fussy Belgian detective, takes private cases from his flat in a white modern block, with Captain Arthur Hastings (Hugh Fraser) as companion and Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) keeping the files. Japp (Philip Jackson) is the policeman who reaches the body a step behind him. The first episode brings Mrs. Todd (Brigit Forsyth) from Clapham to his door because her cook, Eliza Dunn (Freda Dowie), has vanished, and Poirot is affronted to be consulted about anything so small. The cases grow across 13 series and 70 episodes: country houses, trains, a steamer on the Nile, with guests including Emily Blunt and Aidan Gillen, and the early 50-minute puzzles give way to longer adaptations of the novels.

## Review

*Agatha Christie’s Poirot* began on 8 January 1989 and ended in 2013, after 13 series and 70 episodes, and David Suchet is in every one of them. That was the plan, and it is the achievement: one actor playing one detective through practically everything Christie wrote about him, over 24 years, while 27 directors, six cinematographers and more than twenty writers came and went. The 50-minute comedies of the first series and the long, dark films of the last are barely the same programme. Suchet is the reason they belong together.

He plays Poirot as a man who believes the cutlery matters. The coat is brushed, the moustache waxed, the chairs squared to the table, because a world where those things are attended to is a world in which murder is an insult, and he takes it personally. The walk is short and quick, the head tilts to listen, and the voice sits higher than you expect and never hurries. In the early series this is played for laughs, and it is funny. Later, as Kevin Elyot and others took on the novels, the laughs thin out and the same habits read as a lonely, devout man holding himself in order.

We did not expect to be moved by a Sunday-evening detective programme, and we were. There is a scene late in the run in which Poirot kneels by a hotel bed with his rosary, alone, and says his prayers, and Suchet plays it with none of the comedy he has spent two decades earning. We were got at, properly, and the reason is simple: by then we had watched the man straighten a thousand things, and here was the one thing he could not.

Around him the early years give him a household. Hugh Fraser’s Captain Hastings is a decent, slow Englishman who likes a motor car and is always a page behind; Fraser never once plays him as a fool, which is harder than it looks. Pauline Moran’s Miss Lemon runs the filing with the seriousness Poirot brings to a corpse. Philip Jackson’s Japp arrives at every body a step late and knows it, and the pleasure is that he does not resent it. These three carry the 50-minute episodes, and the series is thinner when it does without them.

Christopher Gunning’s theme is a saxophone over strings, a cocktail-bar tune with something slightly wrong in it, and it tells you the period and the mood in eight bars. Mike Oxley and Rob Harris give Poirot a white flat with chrome rails and a London of posters and lidos, which is the 1930s as the decade liked to draw itself. The look changes hands often, with six cinematographers credited across the run, and you can see the joins: the early episodes are lit flat and bright, which suits the jokes, and the later films are shot in long shadows that suit the Elyot scripts. Clive Exton, who wrote much of the first run, gave it its jokes. Anthony Horowitz, Nick Dear and Mark Gatiss followed, and the guests get grander: Emily Blunt as Linnet Ridgeway, Aidan Gillen as Amyas Crale, Alex Jennings as Dr. Roberts.

It is not all of a piece. The short-story episodes can be slight, a body, four suspects, a drawing room and Poirot explaining, and 50 minutes is sometimes too long for the puzzle. The later novel adaptations have the opposite trouble, and some of them add misery that Christie did not write, as if the writers were embarrassed by her lightness. Watched in order, the jump in tone is a jolt. And Christie’s suspects are types; the actors give them faces, but the puzzle needs them interchangeable and the scripts cannot give them much inside.

Peter Ustinov played Poirot in the cinema as a comic turn, and Albert Finney before him as an impersonation. Suchet plays him as a person, and that is the difference between a programme you have on and one you watch. Start at the beginning, with Mrs. Todd and her missing cook. One episode a night, tea, and do not bother trying to guess the killer; you will not, and the programme does not mind.

*Fi1m score 83, published 7 October 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is Agatha Christie's Poirot worth watching?**

*Agatha Christie's Poirot* is worth watching for anyone who likes a detective puzzle with a proper performance at its centre, and we scored it 83. David Suchet holds 70 episodes together across 24 years, and the series around him is uneven, slight in the early short stories and sometimes gloomier than Christie wrote in the later films. Start at the beginning, one episode a night.

**How long is Agatha Christie's Poirot, and what is it rated?**

*Agatha Christie's Poirot* has episodes of about 50m and is rated G by the CHVRS in Canada. It is a crime and drama series.

**Where can I watch Agatha Christie's Poirot in Canada?**

*Agatha Christie's Poirot* is streaming on BritBox and Amazon Prime Video in Canada. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is Agatha Christie's Poirot, and is it suitable for children?**

*Agatha Christie's Poirot* is a UK 12 and a US TV-PG: murders in drawing rooms, country houses and on trains, with the bodies found rather than dwelt upon. The early 50-minute episodes are light and often funny; the later novel adaptations are darker and add misery of their own. Older children and teenagers who can follow a puzzle will be fine; it is not for the very young.

**How does Agatha Christie's Poirot compare to Jonathan Creek?**

*Agatha Christie's Poirot* is the more consistent and the better made of the two, carried by David Suchet playing the detective as a person rather than a comic turn. [*Jonathan Creek*](https://film.one/tv/jonathan-creek) shares a writer in David Renwick and trades the between-the-wars drawing room for a duffel coat and a windmill, with cleverer locked-room puzzles but uneven jokes and later partnerships that lose some of the appeal. Choose Poirot for the long run, Creek for the ingenuity.

**Is Agatha Christie's Poirot based on a true story or a book?**

*Agatha Christie's Poirot* is based on Agatha Christie's novels and short stories about Hercule Poirot, not on a true story. The early series adapt the short stories in 50-minute episodes; the later series adapt the novels at length, and we note that some of those add a misery Christie did not write. You do not need to have read the books, and reading them will not help you guess the killer.

### Reviews we read (1)

- **The Guardian**, Sam Wollaston (75/100, inferred): Wollaston finds Poirot’s final case confusing but entertaining, and feels it provides a fitting farewell. He especially praises David Suchet’s moving performance as Poirot faces death. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/13/agatha-christies-poirot-tv-review)

## Details

- **Created by:** Edward Bennett, Andrew Grieve, Renny Rye, Brian Farnham, Ashley Pearce, Andy Wilson, Richard Spence, Andrew Piddington, Hettie Macdonald, Charles Palmer, Ross Devenish, John Bruce, Peter Barber-Fleming, Ken Grieve, Sarah Harding, Paul Unwin, John Strickland, Maurice Phillips, Simon Langton, David Moore, Tom Clegg, Peter Lydon, Stephen Whittaker, Dan Reed, Tom Vaughan, Philip Martin, James Kent
- **Director:** Edward Bennett, Andrew Grieve, Renny Rye, Brian Farnham, Ashley Pearce, Andy Wilson, Richard Spence, Andrew Piddington, Hettie Macdonald, Charles Palmer, Ross Devenish, John Bruce, Peter Barber-Fleming, Ken Grieve, Sarah Harding, Paul Unwin, John Strickland, Maurice Phillips, Simon Langton, David Moore, Tom Clegg, Peter Lydon, Stephen Whittaker, Dan Reed, Tom Vaughan, Philip Martin, James Kent
- **Screenplay:** Clive Exton, Anthony Horowitz, Nick Dear, David Renwick, Guy Andrews, Mark Gatiss, Kevin Elyot, Douglas Watkinson, Stewart Harcourt, Michael Baker, Andrew Marshall, Russell Murray, Michael Baker, Trevor Bowen, Bill Craig, Peter Flannery, David Pirie, William Humble, Rod Beacham, Philomena McDonagh, Stephen Wakelam, David Reid, Ian Hallard
- **Teleplay:** Russell Murray
- **Novel:** Agatha Christie
- **Cinematography:** Ivan Strasburg, Alan Almond, Peter Jessop, Martin Fuhrer, Peter Greenhalgh, Vernon Layton
- **Editor:** Derek Bain, Jon Costelloe, Paul Hudson, Kristina Hetherington, John Mayes, Max Lemon
- **Music:** Christopher Gunning, Christian Henson
- **Production design:** Rob Harris, Mike Oxley
- **Producer:** Brian Eastman, Karen Thrussell, David Boulter
- **Cast:** David Suchet as Hercule Poirot; Tom Riley as Raymond Boynton; Pauline Moran as Miss Lemon; Hugh Fraser as Captain Arthur Hastings; Lawrence McGrandles Jr. as Simon Kelso; Philip Jackson as Assistant Commissioner Japp; Emily Blunt as Linnet Ridgeway; Alex Jennings as Dr. Roberts
- **Runtime:** 50m
- **Certificate (CHVRS):** G
- **Release (Canada):** 8 January 1989
- **Genres:** Crime, Drama, Mystery
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4ypEmJlfn8

## Where to watch in Canada

- BritBox: streaming, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd

*Checked 2026-10-07.*

Also available in: AT, AU, CA, DE, ES, GB, IE, IT, NZ, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Miss Marple* (1984): Joan Hickson’s Marple is the other definitive Christie performance; quieter, sharper, village-sized.
- *The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes* (1984): Jeremy Brett does for Holmes what Suchet does for Poirot: plays the mannerisms as a life.
- *Columbo* (1971): The American inversion: you know the killer, and the pleasure is watching him sweat.
- *Jonathan Creek* (1997), Fi1m 78: David Renwick wrote for Poirot; here his locked-room puzzles get a duffel coat and a windmill. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/jonathan-creek.md)
- *Death on the Nile* (1978): Ustinov’s Poirot on a steamer with a cast of film stars, for comparison and for the frocks.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/agatha-christies-poirot