Poirot Meets The Facts of Life - Cat Among the Pigeons
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- A comparison of the Agatha Christie novel Cat Among the Pigeons to its 2008 TV adaptation.
Uses stills and footage from:
Scream (1996)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Wednesday (2022)
The Facts of Life, Season 1
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Appointment With Death (1988)
Dr. No (1962)
From Russia With Love (1963)
Sherlock: A Study in Pink
The Nice Guys (2016)
I love this adaptation! It's one of my favourite Poirot films :) And I do think the film fixes some, shall we say, Orientalist pitfalls the book has... I also love the depiction of Julia and Jennifer's friendship and the school overall in the film. As someone who went to an all-girls school, it just feels so genuine!
Thank you for the fun video!
I 100% agree about the Orientalist/colonialist pitfalls. There's still elements of them there, but I feel they're treated more with a tone of "look how the English behaved in those days" rather than a sense over approval.
i grew up in an all girls school, but im a guy, reason was my father was the handyman who maintained the building, its plumbing and other odd jobs, he had a small house on the edge of the grounds to always be near at any hour in case of being needed, and i was raised there, i got taught after hours by some of the teachers, when i hut my teens, i started helping my dad out with the work, my old man passed away 40 years ago, and when he passed, all the girls at the school came to his funeral, my father was respected by the girls for his attitude of not treating the girls like children, he said "this is a school for young ladies, not children, and should be treated with the same respect you would show the teachers" and he was right, some of the girls there hated being treated like children, and my fathers way of talking helped them put up with it
@@Unownshipper That's the blessing and curse of historical accuracy. History was rarely "up to our modern standards".
@@quantumvideoscz2052 it’s true, but I appreciate a production that shows the past warts and all. You can feel nostalgic for an era but it’s important to recognize the aspects best left in the past.
@ Precisely my point. In fact, I really dislike it when someone goes against history in a story just to make it "up to modern standards". Especially when adapting something from a different culture - that, I call "cultural colonialism".
I love the irony of using footage of the film's writer from another show to represent a character he cut out of his adaptation. 🙂
Cat among the pigeons was my first poirot story I hold it close to my heart 💖
Utterly trivial trivia: Miss Bulstrode is played by Harriet Walter ... who also played Harriet Vane in the Lord Peter Wimsey TV series. The inspector is played by Anton Lesser; you might think of him in Game of Thrones, but he's played the ancient Roman gumshoe Falco in the radio series of the novels of Lindsey Davis.
closer to the genre, Lesser also was the chief of police in 'Endevor'.
One of my top 3 favorites of the Suchet adaptations. Great cast and atmosphere, and kept me guessing til the very end.
Tommy and Tuppence don't get enough love. I'll look forward to your next video.
This book was my introduction to Agatha Christie as a child. I loved it then and love it still. I find most of the David Suchet film adaptations to be very good but I really enjoyed this one. It has a special place.
The adaptation is definitely better than the book in my opinion. The showrunners understood that the detective needed to be in the story much earlier
Someone once said that Christie would have done better to have written “Cat Among the Pigeons” as a Jane Marple, than a Poirot, mystery. It would make more sense, the writer claimed, that Miss Marple would have a boarding school headmistress as an old friend.
This was a good comparison video. The differences in charachters are fun, because it gives both the book and the film their own pase. With that, one can read the book and watch the film close to each other and still enjoy both. Thank you for another amazing video!
Cat among the pigeons was the first AC book I read and therefore holds a special place in my heart. It could have been much more a Tommy and Tuppence's story than a Poirot one.
*YES! LET’S GO! “SECRET ADVERSARY”! “SECRET ADVERSARY”!*
The all girls school reminds me of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers. It also has a strong female character as the headmistress, like Malory Towers. I guess Christie got inspiration from Enid Blyton's works.
Another excellent analysis!
Great video @miles!! Lime this adaptation a lot, even though the denouncement was a little simplified for the film!
3:18 It's early/mid twentieth century, they're upper class, and it's a boarding school. I'm sure the parents couldn't care so long as the kids are out of their hair.
Having only seen the film and not read the book, there were some aspects that I had to check because they seemed more Hollywood Action Film than Cozy Murder Mystery; namely Ms. Chatwick's diving to take a bullet and deathbed confession. It really surprised me that that was true to the book.
I have a tiny issue with the ending where Julia receives one of the jewels, but it's *much* better than the book's choice IMO. That ending is too Colonial British for my liking: "Yes of course, have the precious jewels stay in England. What else would we do? Return them to the filthy savages in the backwater foreign county where they were mined from?! Utter poppycock!"
3:59 This small plot device feels lifted from “Evil Under the Sun.”
This is one of my favourites ❤❤❤
This movie was my favorite during my chemotherapy sessions. I was shocked to see that it’s gone from TH-cam. Are you able to post the movie? Thank you.
It is a good one! I wish I could post it, but whenever I make one of these videos, any clip longer than nine seconds trips TH-cam's sensors and the whole video gets copyright-blocked. :(
3:44 The real answer to this lady’s question, a sad answer, is that if your ears are tuned to overhearing threats and plots, you uncover them by accident, because they’re going on almost everywhere you go. It happens a lot more often than most people even realize. I think Peter Ustinov’s Poirot doesn’t find them, I think they find him, more or less.
I liked this movie - I think it's a good rendition of the book.
Miss Chadwick thought she would be the alternative to Miss Vansittart for replacement head but was never possible Head material for Miss Bulstrode. I can go along with leaving out Mr Robinson, but did regret the omission of Miss Vansittart. And one of my favourite parts of the book (very Christielike) was the beginning section and why Miss Bulstrode missed Mrs Upjohn's revelation.
Remaking the book with Julia as protagonist would be a golden opportunity to give a large part to the briefly-mentioned Maureen Summerhayes from Mrs McGinty's Dead.
New Poirot fan here, just saw ''Three Act Tragedy'' and I'm wondering if you have any plans to compare the book to the TV adaption if you haven't already.
Probably not till next year but it's on the list!
there are two "Three Act Tragedies" that vary distinctly in tone and color. ONe is set in Mexico and SoCal, with Ustinov and Tony Curtis. The other one is set in England with Martin Shaw and Suchet as Poirot.
Not saying that one is better than the other, but the locations and the choice of Poirot provide for a distinctively different viewing experience.
I was referring to the Suchet version
I love the Piriot series is Mr favorite from all her TV characters you can’t have the book being same as the films there is not enough time on screen 😂😂😂 People want to much I like Mr David Suchet, he is Piriot!
Nice Connery reference lmao
I feel like when an author gets successful their books start to fall into one of two camps.
1. "I had this amazing idea."
2. I could use a pool.
Cat Among the Pigeons always felt like the latter to me. Not saying the book isn't incredible, but Poirot's absence felt like Christie wanted to do something other than Poirot, but didn't care enough about that to not use the branding. She could call it a Hercule Poirot novel and sell a lot more than if he wasn't in the book it all. He was gone so long from the novel that his presence felt almost forced.
And to be clear, I'm not judging Christie for doing this. Not saying she sold out her artistic integrity or what have you. Every so often, you gotta put food on the table and more is better than less. It just leaves the novel feeling a bit off to me.
This perspective definitely makes sense when you learn Christie grew quite tired with Poirot at times.
Well, that is why Big Four and Mystery of the Blue Train exist. She needed money in a hurry because of her divorce. She always called them her least favorite novels.
Hate the "Silk Stocking" filter treatment in the later Poirots.
How come every adaptation you do, you add in a James Bond reference, it’s starting to become like the Simpsons couch gag
Whenever I read the scene with Adam and Colonel Pikeaway, I can't help picturing Bond and M.
To be fair, the Agatha Christie adapters did it a few times themselves. The Miss Marple episode "A Caribbean Mystery" has Ian Fleming in the lecture audience and he comes up with James Bond's name from the presenter!
@@Unownshipper What the heck is that even doing there? It's such a strange addition.
@@Unownshipper I know, I suggested it to Miles a while ago
@@Unownshipper And I seem to recall that in one of the Julia Mackenzie Miss Marple films, when a stranger asks her name she replies: "Marple, Jane Marple." (I believe that reference to "Bond, James Bond" was the work of Kevin Elyot.)
Does the book or movie mention who was the one that tried to open/knock at Julia's door when she had opened the racquet handle?
In both, it's implied to be Ann Shapland.
I like The Secret of Chimney a lot. But I don't think there's a film about it.
A 2010 TV adaptation, in the Marple series, featuring (a far too young) Julia McKenzie, changes the killer’s identity and motive and unnecessarily inserts aspects of the short story “The Herb of Death” among many other alterations, few for the better.