Some assorted musings about the episode The Adventure of the Cheap Flat…
* When he’s working with his friend, Poirot seems to be eternally useless at inconspicuous burgling, whereas Hastings is awkward but ultimately successful– see The Veiled Lady and Wasps’ Nest for confirmation. On his own, Poirot has more subtlety!
* I do have a few little script quibbles. The overblown American stereotypes I find annoying. (And football metaphors along with everything else… really?) Also, the alteration of the plot for television makes Poirot to spot the Italian-American outside the block of flats for some time before the man enters the building at night. Great for dramatic tension, sure, but since he knows the guy’s purpose, WHY doesn’t Poirot just approach this man in daylight and explain everything in advance, rather than waiting for him to break into the flat and risking someone getting knifed?? I know the blasted little man wants to be dramatic and all, but really! In the book, he knows the “swarthy stranger” has been asking about the tenants but doesn’t know where the Italian is in advance, so he has to wait until the man breaks into the Robinsons’ to apprehend him and explain things. And the story flows naturally from there. Television-Hastings really deserves the chance to give Poirot a smack upside the head for all this…
* When you have an assortment of nerdy interests, you find strange and unlikely overlaps between them everywhere. For me, I watch The Adventure of the Cheap Flat and I think of George Harrison. The “Night Club Music” in the episode in question is credited to one Neil Richardson. Presumably this includes the music we hear at about the 26-minute mark, when Poirot visits The Black Cat to interview the crooked Bernie Cole. As he wanders through the nightclub, the jazzy riff puts a song into mind by George Harrison called “Not Guilty”— originally written and recorded, though not originally released, with the Beatles.
The night club music has this riff of F#-D-C#DAC# that reminds me awfully of the similar E-G-AGDB riff in “Not Guilty.” It’s not plagiarizingly similar or anything… but I just can’t not think of it… and it’s just really funny that the title of the other song is “Not Guilty.” 😉 Offhand I can’t think of any other cute and clever connections between the Poirot universe and George Harrison himself, other than perhaps the fact that one of Suchet’s earliest film roles was The Missionary, with Maggie Smith, and a Handmade Films production. Harrison founded the company in the late ’70s, the same year in fact that he was recording “Not Guilty” for his well-received self-titled album.
* Okay, now we come to the giveaway. Since today’s post is about Cheap Flat, I’ll be offering this miniature painting in a cute little black wood frame to the winner. The canvas itself is 2.5″x3.5″ and the frame makes it just a little bigger. The scene is from this episode, the moment when Poirot is explaining to a bewildered Hastings that he aims to take a flat in the same building as the Robinsons. ***UPDATE***: No winners were forthcoming this week, so a new contest to win this painting is up at this post here.
Bon chance!
Seven Storeys High 