Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There cannot be anyone more attached to the world of Agatha Christie on screen than the actor David Suchet. His involvement with the Queen of British Crime Fiction stretches back over 25 years as the detective Hercule Poirot and from the walk, the moustache and his demeanour, he is every little bit the Belgian who turns up to solve some of Agatha Christie’s most enduring and incredible stories.

Agatha Christie’s life however is a little less known and just as strange and perplexing, a secrecy wrapped in an enigma typed between sales ranging up in millions. She still remains the most read novelist in English literature and in the new series of Perspectives: The Mystery of Agatha Christie, David Suchet explores this durable figure in the highs and extreme lows of her life and sets out to find out more about the woman who wrote such books as Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express and Murder in Mesopotamia.

What the viewers were treated too was a man who feels so at home with the image that was created by Ms. Christie that he was able to really get under the skin, the intrigue and joy of the text that he, like all fans of the writer would have been, was simply overjoyed to be given the rare honour of reading her own typed out notes for her autobiography and the attention-grabbing moment when the classic actor was handed her note books that she wrote the plot lines down in and perhaps unsurprisingly the scores from frequent bridge games.

The only question that has always eluded an answer where Agatha Christie is concerned is what happened to her during the ten days in which she disappeared after her first husband asked for a divorce. Was it a planned escape or a ruse in which is suggested that she did it as a publicity stunt? Some questions are never meant to be answered but the glint in David Suchet’s eyes as he posed these conundrums was perhaps something the great lady would have loved.

A great start to a new series.

 Ian D. Hall