Agatha Christie's Poirot: Taken at the Flood

August 10, 2022 4:19 PM - Season 10, Episode 4

When a stranger is found murdered at Warmsley Vale, the Cloade family ask for Poirot's help to find out if the dead man was Rosaleen Cloade's first husband. The Cloades have been suffering financially since Rosaleen married their uncle Gordon, and if they could prove the marriage was bigamous then they could inherit Gordon's fortune.
posted by Carillon (3 comments total)

What a disturbing one! David Hunter is well played, but pretty brutal. The humiliation scene with the check stood out for the casual cruelty. It also shows how precarious people felt even coming from money, that they could be cut out and left in the cold. The Aunt is also a piece of work too.

Similar to Five Little Pigs, I felt more oppressive dread from this one than most of the others.
posted by Carillon at 4:27 PM on August 10, 2022

I thought I'd heard of all the Christie titles even if I'd never read them but not this one. The large cast of familiar names, good, love Pip Torrens, but they didn't give Jenny Agutter anything to do and the police superintendent could've been eliminated entirely.

The really bizarre angle was to have Lynn get dickmatized by the clearly odious Hunter in the space of an hour. Then the bedside scene with half-comatose Rosaleen, Hunter and Lynn.... " I don't for a minute imagine we'll be particularly happy together. But the funny thing is, I don't care. Love is bigger than happiness"....JFC, I hope that is not an original Christie line. It was really skeevy.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:39 PM on August 10, 2022

FWIW, Twinbrook8, this adaptation is pretty dramatically different from the novel. I can’t remember off the top of my head if that line is in the book, but the adaptation introduces a lot of titillating elements not present in the original.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 7:25 PM on August 11, 2022