Poirot "Cat Among the Pigeons" #11.2 (2008) (TV)

"Death of a games mistress in a sports pavilion. Sounds like a highly athletic crime.", 31 March 2017

Poirot pays a visit to school for girls and is asked by the Headmistress, Miss Bulstrode (Harriet Walter), to use his powers of observation to help her select a replacement once she retires. Poirot's powers of observation, however, are soon required for something more sinister when one of the teachers is murdered – a javelin through the heart. Before Poirot can unmask the killer, a second teacher is murdered, another is hit over the head, and one of the students is kidnapped. Poirot must find The Cat Among the Pigeons.

I certainly don't remember every detail, but I do remember enjoying the book, Cat Among the Pigeons. And I'm happy to say that I also enjoyed this production. While a few details have been changed from Christie's original work, from what I remember, it stays fairly true to the source material. All the most significant plot points are here and only minor additions or changes have been made – most necessary for a 90 minute runtime. Similar to what I wrote about Elephants Can Remember, Cat Among the Pigeons has a lot of moving parts – a staff full of suspects, several girls who play the part of witness, a coup in the Middle East, missing rubies, two murders, a knock on the head, and a kidnapped princess. There's certainly a lot going on and director James Kent and screenwriter Mark Gatiss do an admiral job of keeping it all coherent. They also add quite a bit of atmosphere – that kind of sinister atmosphere that I usually associate with a good Giallo. The acting is, as I've come to expect in the Poirot series, first rate. Suchet is very good here. Harriet Walter, Susan Wooldridge, and Lois Edmett (in her only screen credit) stood out to me in the supporting cast. The only negative I can add is in the solution to the mystery. Poirot seems to guess at many of the answers in his denouement without much actual evidence to go on. Still, it's a very well done, entertaining episode.

8/10