I've missed the latest of these due to the utterly brilliant Lost In Austen but I've been catching up the Thursday 7pm repeats.

David Suchet was fascinating. As he noticed, Poirot is exactly like his great grandfather, who he never knew.

Another wonderful episode. Whoever puts these together does a quite magnificent job.

love Poirot & Miss Marple. I think I read every single Agatha Chritie book when young..never worked out the murderer until he/she was revealed.

I once worked with Agatha Christie's nephew and niece and they were as dotty as can be. I think she was a pretty odd lady..brilliant but odd.

The latest Poirots are SO disappointing - the lack of Hastings, Lemon, Japp...

and worst of all, erasing that fabulous theme tune and wonderful art deco titles!

I also miss Hastings and Japp although I think these later Poirots are an improvement on the last few. The one on the train crammed with big names such as Elliot Gould was just two hours of boredom. By the end I'd really stopped caring who did it or why.

I heard from a friend, who is a big Christie fan, that she wrote Hastings and Japp out of the books much earlier. It was the producers who decided to keep the characters in the series for a while longer, but I think it's most likely that Japp would have retired by now and wouldn't be the same if not a policeman. I think Hasings married in the books and went off to foreign parts. So I guess it's a reflection of time passing.

David Suchet says he is not looking forward to filming the death scene in the final episode because he has grown so fond of Poirot. But he does want to cover all of the books. I think there are four more stories after this series.

Poirot is a short fat french bloke who thinks he is the composer from Death In Venice.

funny you say that..in the Suchet series it's almost like Poirot is a closet gay..just like Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice..although of course he wasn't supposed gay as much as falling in love with "beauty " ( even though Tadzio was a teenage boy ! )