Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Suchet, Simon Callow, Morven Christie, Nigel Lindsay, Tom Chabdon, Tom Austin, Rupert Evans, Stephen Frost, Richard Katz, Sandy McDade, Nicholas McGaughey, Isobel Middleton, Fiona O’ Shaughnessy, Patrick Tomlinson, Tom Wlaschicha.

With the last ever set of detective stories being filmed for I.T.V. involving David Suchet as the indomitable Hercule Poirot, audiences could be forgiven for feeling as if they are saying a fond farewell to the Belgian sleuth who has graced the screens of the nation for the last 24 years. A farewell not born out of happiness but for the gracious way in which David Suchet has portrayed the man with honour in all that time and has for all intense purposes, been the embodiment of Agatha Christie’s greatest literary creation.

Perhaps there was no better tale to have as the penultimate story than The Labours of Hercules, a television feast in which everybody involved was not who they were meant to be. A story of masks, of deceit and the pricking of professional pride that nearly wrought the end for the much loved detective; however Poirot is not defeated so easily.

The Swiss Alps was again a great nod to the work of Arthur Conan Doyle and his creation who had his fall from grace and life at Reichenbach, Switzerland though was not to be the fall of Poirot, rather in a story so weaved and in which the beauty was only matched by the senseless butchery, it was to be his salvation. Hercules and Hercule Poirot, joined not just in similarity of name but also in their endeavour to beat all. Whereas Sherlock Holmes had his nemesis in his near equal Professor Moriarty, Poirot’s could not have been more disturbing or beguiling and whilst seasoned amateur television sleuths may have got there before the end of the two hour feast, the thought of the outcome would be one in which shockwaves would have been felt as the murderer was unveiled.

With Simon Callow and the brilliant Orla Brady making a welcome appearance in this last but one story, the feeling of anguish felt by David Suchet, of the rare professional misjudgement was all the more heightened. Mr. Callow, seemingly unruffled in any television programme, was as always a joy to watch, a man who gives all in his performance and who was only outdone by Mr. Suchet throughout.

Poirot’s song may be ending but he is not going gently into the light, nor has his labour been in vain.

Ian D. Hall