Poirot and Me (32 page)

the splendid stately home Luton Hoo, in

Bedfordshire.

Then, in an extraordinary coincidence – or

was it? – the first of the four 75-minute

episodes was broadcast on 11 November

2001, the tenth anniversary of Robert

Maxwell’s death.

The critics certainly seemed to like it.

Peter Paterson, in the Daily Mail, captured

that exactly when he said, ‘The Way We Live

Now looks as though it will be a big success,

not only because it is well-acted and lavishly

produced. For both the title and the subject

matter parallel our own well-remembered

Eighties.’ In a separate feature, the same

paper called the drama ‘an oasis in the

desert of today’s television’. The Times

added that it was ‘pacy and funny and

beautifully acted and we should enjoy it

while it is there’, while the Guardian

concluded, ‘This is one of the winter’s first

must-see dramas,’ and called it ‘a delicious

dollop of Trollope’.

With the American television station

WGBH in Boston involved in the production,

it was inevitable that The Way We Live Now

would quickly appear in the United States,

and it did so on 22 April 2002, to equally

good reviews. The Boston Globe called it ‘a

classic that feels current’, while the San

Francisco

Chronicle

described

it

as

‘melodrama with uncommon intelligence and

depth’, and the Los Angeles Daily News

added that it was ‘witty, filled with intrigue

and richly detailed . . . a scabrous

commentary on the way it seems we will

always live’.

By the time those reviews appeared,

however, I had already finished another role

for the BBC – a drama-documentary about

the British barrister George Carman, a man

arguably just as conflicted as Melmotte, with

a history of alcoholism, domestic violence

and gambling, as well as a glittering career

in the law. Get Carman was broadcast in

April 2002 and featured extended interviews

with Carman’s son, Dominic, who had

recently written a book about his complex

father.

What was most fascinating for me,

however, was that it reconstructed some of

the barrister’s greatest courtroom moments,

including his defence of the Liberal politician

Jeremy Thorpe against a charge of

conspiracy to murder, and his defence of the

comedian Ken Dodd for tax fraud, which

included Carman’s wonderful phrase in court,

‘Some accountants are comedians, but

comedians are never accountants.’

Once again, I was lucky enough to have

the advice of some of his family, including

his third wife, Frances, who kindly wrote to

me afterwards to tell me how odd it had

been for her, having known him so well, to

see him so well characterised.

Even without Poirot, I was suddenly in

demand everywhere. No sooner was the

Carman documentary broadcast, than I was

on my way to play another real figure, this

time the Iraqi Information Minister in 1991,

in a film for the Home Box Office cable

network in the United States, about the

effect news can have on the prospect of war,

called Live from Baghdad. This made-for-

television film was shot just a few months

before the American and British invasion of

Iraq in March 2003, and could hardly have

been more controversial. Directed by an

Englishman living in Los Angeles, Mick

Jackson, the film examined the complexities

of 24-hour broadcast news in the days

leading up to the first Gulf War, and asked

whether news could ever help to avert a

conflict.

I

was

appearing

alongside

three

established film stars, Michael Keaton, who

played the senior CNN producer in Iraq at

the time, Robert Wiener, and Helena

Bonham Carter, as another producer he

meets on his arrival, while I was playing Naji

al-Hadithi, a man who was by turns cynical

and sinister, sharp-witted and seductive. I

enjoyed it enormously. It became one of my

happiest experiences filming in America,

made even more memorable by the fact that

during the filming, I was awarded the OBE

by the Queen in her Birthday Honours list. I

had not told anyone on the set about this,

but on the morning of the announcement, I

found my canvas chair on the set had the

words ‘David Suchet OBE’ painted on the

back. It was very sweet of them.

The next film I made was also in the

United States, in the autumn of 2002, and it

was my second alongside Michael Douglas, a

comedy called The In-Laws. The film offered

me a chance to get away from playing

villains – well, almost. I played an

emotionally insecure arms dealer who tries

to sell Michael Douglas – who is an

undercover CIA agent – all sorts of weapons,

including a Russian submarine. I seemed to

spend a lot of time wearing white trousers

with

matching

sweaters

and

looking

decidedly camp, not something I suspect

Poirot would have approved of entirely.

Shortly after I returned to England, I was

invited to Buckingham Palace for the

investiture of my OBE by the Queen, which

reminded me so much of the mango incident

and how I had learned later that Poirot had

always been one of her mother’s favourite

television programmes. Nine years later, I

was lucky enough to be awarded a CBE,

which was given to me by the Prince of

Wales. By then, it had been two years since I

had last played the little Belgian, and I was

honestly beginning to wonder whether he

would ever see the light of day again when a

bombshell struck. I was on holiday back in

England with Sheila, on our new narrow

boat, when I got a call from Brian Eastman

to tell me that something was going on

about Poirot.

Brian was reticent on the phone. ‘I’m not

sure what’s happening,’ he told me. I asked

if there was anything I could do, and he said

no, but that he would keep in touch.

Not long afterwards, he called me again

and told me that the powers that be at

Chorion, who represented the Agatha

Christie estate and had been partners with

the Arts & Entertainment network for the last

four films, wanted to make some dramatic

changes to the Poirot format, changes that

he feared would not involve him, in spite of

all he had done to create and foster the

show’s success. I promised that I would do

everything I could to help, but I knew in my

heart that I was an actor for hire and had no

real control over the direction of the series.

I was at a crossroads. I owed Brian an

enormous amount for giving me the

opportunity to play Poirot, and for supporting

me when I insisted that I alone really

understood all his foibles and idiosyncrasies.

It was Agatha Christie’s family, and in

particular her daughter Rosalind, who had

first thought of me to play the role and

suggested it to Brian, who had then helped

to make the series a triumph in so many

countries around the world, but now I had to

decide whether I wanted to go on without

him at my side. It was a tremendously

difficult decision, because there was also a

part of me that could not bear the thought of

never playing Poirot again, never fulfilling my

dream of playing him in every single story

that Dame Agatha wrote for him.

After a series of meetings, it transpired

that Granada Television, part of ITV, wanted

to go ahead with four new Poirot films, but

they also wanted a far greater input into

how they looked and felt than London

Weekend had done in the past, when Brian

had been the producer. Significantly, they

were also prepared to spend many millions

of pounds to make them.

There were to be two new executive

producers on behalf of Granada and ITV,

Michelle Buck and Damien Timmer, who had

distinct ideas about how Poirot should

evolve. In particular, they wanted each new

Poirot to be a two-hour television special,

with all the production qualities and cast of a

feature film.

They did not want the almost ‘family’ feel

of the original one-hour versions, with

Hastings and Miss Lemon fussing over Poirot

at Whitehaven Mansions. In fact, they did

not want to force either character artificially

into any of Dame Agatha’s stories in future

(as we had sometimes done in the past).

Instead, they wanted to be as faithful as

they could to the originals. Out would go the

opening titles of the train and Christopher

Gunning’s music. Instead, each film would be

a standalone drama, titled Agatha Christie:

Poirot, and would claim its place in the

television schedules on its own merit, rather

than as part of a series. To put it simply, the

new team, led by Michelle and Damien,

wanted to make each of their Poirot films a

special event on ITV.

Exactly why Brian was not to be involved

is a mystery that I have never been able to

solve; all I know is that Michelle and Damien

invited me to tea at the Ritz Hotel in London

to explain their plans. They were incredibly

welcoming and extremely enthusiastic,

telling me that they wanted to give Poirot a

new atmosphere, as they sensed the series

had become a bit formulaic, but that their

brief from the estate was also to remain true

to Dame Agatha’s original stories and

character. I was charmed, and excited, but

there was still the issue of Brian at the back

of my mind.

What should I do? Could I go on without

him?

In the end, Sheila asked me the most

sensible question of all, ‘Do you want to go

on playing Poirot?’

The answer, of course, was yes.

‘Well then, I think you have to do it,’ she

said gently. ‘Brian will understand.’

And he did. When I telephoned him to say

that I was going ahead with the new series

and the new team, he was incredibly

understanding.

‘Of course you want to continue,’ he told

me. ‘It has nothing to do with our friendship.

You must do it.’

It was incredibly generous of him, but I

was very upset to lose him, because we had

spent fourteen years together, some of the

most dramatic years of my professional life.

But there were still four new films to be

made. What I did not know at the time was

that they would turn out to be the turning

point in the relationship between Poirot and

me.

In the years that have passed since then,

Brian has always been very friendly

whenever we have met. He and his wife,

Christabel, come and see me whenever I am

in a West End play, and even took me out to

dinner when I was filming in Los Angeles. I

am still enormously grateful to him for giving

me the chance to play Poirot.

ITV officially announced the new films in

November 2002, focusing on their decision to

make a new version of Dame Agatha’s

famous Poirot mystery Death on the Nile,

while at the same revealing that they had

also taken over her Miss Marple series from

the BBC.

We started work on the first of the new

Poirots early in 2003, as ITV had decided

that they would like to broadcast two of

them at Christmas that year. The first of the

films was to be Five Little Pigs, directed by

Paul Unwin, who had directed me in NCS:

Manhunt for the BBC. The screenplay was by

a newcomer to Poirot, Kevin Elyot, who

would go on to write the last Poirot film

Curtain.

Five Little Pigs was a very different Poirot

from those early days at Twickenham. The

new film had a distinctly feature-film feel to

it, and that was clear from the moment that