The ABC Murders premiered on BBC One in the UK at Christmas 2018. As Poirot tracks the killer across a riven, tense England, the case peels back the layers of the persona he’s created to survive in a foreign land, surrounded by strangers where the only person who seems to truly understand him, is the deranged, uncontrolled killer. The ominous rumble of the train tracks connects every sinew of the country, every corner of opulence and poverty bound together. killer travels the length and breadth of Britain to taunt Poirot. Even worse, he has been swept aside by the new brooms in the police and forgotten by the Bright Young Things whose dinner parties he entertained. As the British Union of Fascists gains ground, inveighing against ‘aliens’, Poirot feels even more like the outsider that he is. Someone has to take the blame and sympathy for Displaced People has run out. The jubilation of winning the Great War has evaporated, now all there is, is a mess.

England, tolerant, welcoming England, squeezed by Depression, by the dark news from Germany, isn’t as tolerant and welcoming. Poirot has aged and the world has changed quickly around him. In the midst of this we find Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells. This time it is the 1930s a divided country where suspicion and hatred are on the rise, and the gap between wealth and poverty is great and growing greater. In her fourth Agatha Christie adaptation in conjunction with Agatha Christie Limited and Mammoth Screen, BAFTA nominated writer Sarah Phelps continues to explore the 20th century through the work of Britain’s greatest crime writer. If Poirot is to match his most cunning nemesis everything about him will be called into question his authority, his integrity, his past, his identity. As Poirot attempts to investigate he is thwarted on every front by a police force that no longer trusts him, a public that no longer adores him, and an enemy determined to outsmart him. They strike in a methodical pattern and leave a copy of the ABC railway guide at the scene of each of murder. The year is 1933 and a killer stalks Britain, known only as A.B.C. Widely regarded as one of Agatha Christie’s best mysteries, The ABC Murders is one of the most surprising and unusual appearances by literature’s most famous detective. Poirot returns in a new adaptation of one of his most exhilarating cases.

The abc murders john malkovich