Agatha Christie: 100 Years of Poirot and Miss Marple
                       

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Director: Sean Davison
Year: 2020
Rating: 5.5

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An enjoyable and informative 67-minute documentary about the life of Agatha Christie, but also with a focus on ten of her more famous novels. A bunch of talking heads who are experts on the author added some context. She has sold over 2 billion books. Not quite McDonalds but the most of any author in our history except possibly Shakespear. Her first novel "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" written in 1921 and featuring Poirot happened because of a bet with her sister who said she could not write a novel. Considering that Christie's mother forbade her to learn how to read or write till she was eight years old, it might have been a good bet. Christie said this forced her to write stories in her head.



The other books talked about are - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (one of the great twists of all time), The Murder of the Vicarage (introducing Miss Marple), Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None (the genteel Christie is especially blood thirsty in this one), Five Little Pigs (in which Poirot has to solve a murder that is 14 years old and for which a person was hanged - just watched the Suchet take on this two weeks ago - very good), A Murder is Announced (in which the murderer advertises  in a newspaper when and where a murder will take place and it does - Miss Marple investigates), The Pale Horse (supernatural hocus-pocus) and finally The Curtain in which Poirot died. She wrote that one during WW2 because she expected to die. She refused to leave London during the bombing. I have been slowly reading all her Marple and Poirot books - on one now in fact - and am up to 1955.

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