Agatha Christie's Poirot: Hallowe'en Party

October 5, 2022 9:17 AM - Season 12, Episode 2

Novelist Ariadne Oliver attends a Hallowe'en party in Woodleigh Common and hears young Joyce Reynolds boast of having witnessed a murder years before. When the girl is discovered drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket later that evening, Ariadne calls on her old friend Hercule Poirot to investigate. The Belgian sleuth soon uncovers a series of mysterious deaths in the village - any of which Joyce could have seen.
posted by Carillon (2 comments total)

The scene and shots of the kids playing snapdragon are so cool, it's eerie but not super sinister. It really sets the tone for the episode and is pretty cool. Snapdragon is also a fun game that people don't believe me when I say is a thing! It's definitely been lost to a lot of people and seems like a fun thing, though not sure how much brandy kids are actually consuming with those raisins.

The killer is pretty macabre, also very much showing the anxieties of the society, when so many of these stories are about inheritance and rich people's money. The poor Reynolds though, losing two children like that.
posted by Carillon at 10:03 AM on October 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’ve never heard of this game and couldn’t really tell what the kids were doing…surely not playing with fire? so I looked it up on Wikipedia and mother of god, it was an actual parlor game, snatching burning raisins out of a dish of flaming brandy. Alcohol and fire and children, what could go wrong.

As usual, I picked up on some clues and completely missed others. Some things did not make a lot of sense. That Miranda saw a wrapped-up body being dragged into the garden and “didn’t think it was murder”? Shouldn’t have filmed it with a hand showing then. Also it seems quite callous that Leopold who has to be what, 14 years old? blackmailed the murderer of his sister. After he too is killed, Mrs Reynolds’s disappears from the story when you’d think the chief mourner would be present at Poirot’s denouement. And hey, looks like Olga’s mother back in the old country has inherited an estate?

The fantastic gardens were filmed at Beckley Park. Also, it’s so funny, this morning I read that Kenneth Branagh was filming a new Poirot in Venice based on Christie’s “Halloween Party” and I thought, I’ve never heard of that one. It doesn’t even sound like one of her titles and here we are.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:01 PM on October 11, 2022