Cosy Christiemas ritual
DEPENDING on your perspective, the TV schedules at this time of year are either lazily, frustratingly predictable or have a cosy, reassuringly familiar feel to them. My own take on it? Right now, I’m seeing things from the latter, fairly laid-back point of view, albeit possibly because someone has spiked my drink.
I’d feel a little cheated, for example, if Boxing Day didn’t herald the start of another of the BBC’s rather splendid Agatha Christie adaptations. And sure enough, along comes THE ABC MURDERS (BBC1, 9pm), designed to keep us nicely engaged for the next three nights. (Or do I mean the next two nights? It’s a three-nighter, continuing tomorrow and Thursday, that’s the point I’m making. Please don’t confuse me, I have a headache.)
The story is set in 1933, and it’s a Poirot thing. Not a David Suchet Poirot thing, obviously, because Suchet’s not Poirot anymore, and he was an ITV Poirot in any case, so he felt cuddlier and kept pausing for ad breaks, but a John Malkovich Poirot thing, which turns out to be a rather different proposition.
It feels darker, more unsettling, more intense, which I appreciate may seem a daft thing to say, given that every Christie adaptation has always had quite a lot of killing in it, but you’ll get my drift when you watch it.
As for the ABC bit (or “ah, bay, say” as the Belgian sleuth pronounces it), that’s the name adopted by the serial killer at the centre of the story, who for reasons unknown is picking off his victims in alphabetical order and leaving a blood-spattered copy of the ABC railway guide beside each corpse, as if a real-life killer could be bothered with such a faff.
And ABC’s true identity? Who knows, but all eyes for now are on a shifty travelling salesman called Cust (Eamon Farren), whose unsavoury air is only accentuated by the fact he looks like a young Inspector Blake from On The Buses.
Also on the case is ex-Harry Potter star Rupert Grint, looking decidedly non-Ron Weasley-like as the sour Inspector Crome. It’s clear that Crome is no fan of Poirot, or certainly not this Malkovich version. More fool him.
Also falling firmly into the “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without…” category, even now, are Morecambe and Wise.
It’s actually 35 years ago to the day since Eric and Ernie’s final Christmas special (Eric passed away five months later), but it’s considerably further that we travel back for THE MORECAMBE AND WISE SHOW: THE LOST TAPES (BBC2, 7.50pm, 8.30pm). Vintage comedy episodes, long assumed wiped or missing without trace, have a curious habit of resurfacing in unlikely places.
The two we have here, both from 1968, were found in a derelict cinema in Sierra Leone (of course! Why didn’t anyone think to look there before?) and have been colour-restored. The comedy obviously feels dated in places but, even before Eric and Ernie hit their TV peak, it’s not hard to see why the nation took them to its heart.