Why A Hercule Poirot Actor Refused To Make The Agatha Christie Character Funny

There is a strange tendency by TV and film writers to transform the works of Agatha Christie into light romps and playful farces. Christie wrote stern, sometimes bleak murder mysteries wherein damaged and bitter people, acting on their darkest impulses, will bitterly take the lives of others. Only uniquely intelligent and observant detectives like Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot are able to see through the hate of human bitterness to get to the truth. Yet when the time would come to adapt Christie's works to the screen, many screenwriters felt that those tales should also be funny. Christie has gone on record with her dislike of adaptations for this very reason. Few, she felt, did her writing justice. Christie passed away in 1976, so she was able to see some of the films that her works inspired, and she was pretty unilaterally miffed at their existence. 

Christie, sadly, didn't live long enough to see any episodes of ITV's "Agatha Christie's Poirot," a long-running British TV series that starred David Suchet as Christie's persnickety Belgian detective. The series debuted in 1989, and ran periodically until 2013, racking up 70 episodes in its 13 seasons. Suchet may be best known for playing Poirot, although his acting career is long, varied, and impressive. Suchet has been acting since he was a teenager, first appearing in professional stage productions in the 1960s. He moved to film and television in the early '70s, and was prolific for the next two decades, starring in modern dramas and classical adaptations. 

When it came to playing Poirot, Suchet was seemingly aware of Christie's views on her own adaptation. Suchet spoke with the Telegraph in 2025, and he noted that the author always wrote Poirot as deeply serious. He may be fastidious and odd, but he was never funny. Suchet elected that "serious" was the way Poirot ought to be played. 

According to the Independent article, Suchet recalls talking to his brother, John, about Poirot before he agreed to take the role in 1989. Suchet's brother said that Poirot was typically seen as something of a buffoonish, comedic character, no doubt informed by Albert Finney's outsize portrayal of the character in Sidney Lumet's 1974 film version of "Murder on the Orient Express." Suchet disagreed with his brother, and could easily point to Christie's own works as proof that Poirot was a dramatic, not a comedic, character. 

When Suchet agreed to take the role, however, he encountered a few directors — perhaps including Edward Bennett, who helmed 10 early episodes of the series — who also saw Poirot as a buffoon. Suchet admitted that he was insistent on making Poirot serious, to the point of (in his worlds) not being easy to work with. The way Suchet put it: 

"We did have the odd director who wanted to make him funny, who wanted to make him a figure of fun. It became quite challenging and I wasn't easy to work with because of it. I apologize now to all the people who found me difficult because I dug my heels in and only did what Agatha wanted him to do."

It worked out well. The new "Poirot" series was a crossover hit, gathering audiences in England and in the United States. Each episode was based on an extant Christie short story or novel. During ther 2010 season of "Poirot," they even adapted "Murder on the Orient Express." This time, there were no laughs, at least not from Suchet. Suchet got his way, and was right to insist. The actor, now 79, is still working, having most recently appeared in the 2025 TV series "The Au Pair." He also still gets on stage periodically. He played Captain Hook in a 2023 production of "Peter Pan."

Poirot currently lives on in the body of Kenneth Branagh, who is working on additional Poirot feature films as we speak.