Just a little 8×10″ picture that I’ve been trying to finish for ages! The background is sort of fun, being from Appointment With Death.
Appointment With Death
The Adventure of the Cheap Flat… random thoughts, and a giveaway!
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!
The painted miniature books (9)
Here’s a set of four Christie covers that depict somewhat exotic locations…
Appointment With Death is set in Jordan, but was filmed in Morocco. In this still, a tiny Tim Curry and David Suchet contemplate an ancient text unearthed in the archaeological dig. This episode was full of so many incredibly gorgeous sets, locations, and shots that it was hard to choose a cover. But the unique lighting in this image made it the winner. It was incredibly easy to paint, easier than it might look. Even the tiny rosary is visible.
Murder in Mesopotamia is another of Christie’s Middle Eastern archaeological digs, taking place this time in Iraq and Syria but filmed in Tunisia. On this cover I had to avoid Hastings, since he does not feature in the book but was written into the script. I decided on this marvelous shot of Poirot walking away from the camera beneath an arch in a dusty alley. The angle, coloring, and everything else about the image tickled my fancy. Poirot-walking-away shots are always fun, anyway.
Death in the Clouds features a fair bit of action in Paris. Instead of an episode still, I ended up using this image that I think I spotted somewhere online, which (as far as I know) is not actually part of the episode, but looks good. Poirot, Eiffel Tower… what more do you want? I love his outfit here, too– wonderfully dapper.
Finally, I include Evil Under the Sun in this set of exotic locales, although the location is English– the Burgh Island Hotel off the south Devon coast. I watched through the episode to get a still for the cover and could not find ONE that I thought would work. The episode and story are fantastic (actually I think it might be my husband’s favorite episode), but again, I couldn’t use an image with Hastings, since he is not in the main action of the novel, although he is mentioned. And film-Hastings likes to hover over Poirot’s shoulder; in this episode he is particularly “mother chicken”-esque. I watched through the episode a second time searching for a shot. Finally, I cheated. I took a head shot of Poirot looking down from the hotel, and layered it onto a different background which included some of the landscape. In the end I was very satisfied with the result, and I think the cover ties in well with the chosen eponymous quote.