The real mystery here is how Lou Antonio managed to get such a great Agatha Christie film and break it down to ruins so completely. It's set in 1985, Poirot goes on TV(?! I don't think the late dame Agatha would ever have done that), and Peter Ustinov keeps getting the lines hopelessly wrong. The mystery aspect is pretty much taken care of instantly, when the murderer says something, a young man goes "hmm... that's a clue", the murderer looks at the man suspiciously, then the next minute the man is dead, to help you solve it just in case you didn't see the murderer leaving the scene of the crime. If all American TV is like this, I'm glad I live in England. In fact, the only thing this film is good for is the introduction of David Suchet (playing Inspector Japp) to the world of Poirot. If the producers of the LWT series hadn't spotted him, we might have Peter Sallis playing Poirot every Sunday!
Review of Thirteen at Dinner
