Agatha Christie's Poirot: Hickory Dickory Dock

April 13, 2022 11:52 AM - Season 6, Episode 2

A spate of petty thefts is followed by a series of brutal murders at a student hostel in London. Even Poirot has trouble comprehending the significance of the evidence.
posted by Carillon (6 comments total)

I loved incorporating the Jarrow March into this. Also the knapsack smuggling was interesting and I didn't see it coming at first! The music here too with the voice over of Hickory Dickory while showing a mouse was pretty clever and occasionally creepy.

Nigel murdering his mother though and the dad keeping the confession but not actually doing anything else about it is some galaxy brained shit though. Dude killed his mother and that's supposed to stop him doing anything else?
posted by Carillon at 11:54 AM on April 13, 2022

Ugh, that mouse was all over the place and no one saw it until the end? I liked the setting for this, a student hostel. The big clanger for me was the American student claiming she was a Fulbright scholar. The other awkward bit was the “distinctive stitch”, a very ordinary catch stitch, and jeez, either they have very dull knives or that is a very superior canvas wasted on rucksacks. Gave up trying to figure out how the smuggling deal was actually supposed to work…

I liked the puzzle with the random assortment of stolen items and the gradual clarifications followed by another murder but three-quarters of the way through, most of the suspects had had their time in the spotlight or were dead so it was obvious by the time the photo album was discovered.

I reckon that chunk of filet mignon @ 6 shillings would be $20 today but check my math.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:48 PM on April 13, 2022

According to this site, 6 shillings I'm 1935 would be worth about 15 pounds in 2017. So not far off at all.
posted by Carillon at 7:50 PM on April 13, 2022

The big clanger for me was the American student claiming she was a Fulbright scholar.

Haven't seen the show (yet) though I will want to now that I know it exists--but I know the original novel very well, and the American student WAS a Fulbright scholar in the novel.
posted by dlugoczaj at 9:52 AM on April 14, 2022

Yes, I learned at IMDb that the writer retrofitted the plot from the novel (written in the mid-50s) to the tv series set in the 1930s and didn’t catch it. I didn’t watch the series when it originally aired so I thought they were filming it in chronological order of her stories/books and the characters would eventually age up to the 1970s. I guess not; it will remain in pre-war England?
posted by TWinbrook8 at 10:48 AM on April 14, 2022

Pretty much all pre-war England when specified I think. There are some that you could likely make a case for being during or just after the war I suppose, even the last season has episodes set clearly pre-war. Maybe a few aren't but it's pretty much not commented on if so.
posted by Carillon at 1:26 PM on April 14, 2022