Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
Three Act Tragedy
Season 12
Episode Number: 67
Season Episode: 1
Originally aired: Sunday January 3, 2010
Writer:
Agatha Christie, Nick Dear
Director: Ashley Pearce
Show Stars: David Suchet (Hercule Poirot)
Guest Stars: Michael Hobbs (Coroner), Jane Asher (Lady Mary Lytton Gore), Kate
Ashfield (Muriel Wills), Suzanne Bertish (Miss Milray), Anna Carteret
(Mrs Babbington), Prue Clarke (Hospital Matron), Anastasia Hille (Cynthia
Dacres), Art Malik (Sir Bartholomew Strange), Tony Maudsley (Superintendent
Crossfield), Jodie McNee (Annie), Kimberley Nixon (Egg
Lytton Gore), Nigel Pegram (Reverend Stephen Babbington), Martin
Shaw (Sir Charles Cartwright), Ronan Vibert (Captain Dacres), Tom
Wisdom (Oliver Manders)
Summary: Poirot visits Cornwall to attend a dinner party at the house of his friend
Sir Charles Cartwright. When an amiable local clergyman chokes to
death on his cocktail, Poirot does not at first see the death as a murder.
There seems to be no motive, and (as Poirot predicts) no trace of
poison is found in the dead man’s glass. Apart from Sir Charles’s doctor
friend, Sir Bartholomew Strange, and the enigmatic Miss Egg Lytton
Gore, any one of the guests could have taken the glass and drunk
from it. Then, some weeks later, Sir Bartholomew Strange also chokes
to death at a dinner party he is giving, with many of the same people
present. Poirot and Cartwright travel from Monte Carlo to Strange’s
house in Yorkshire, where Cartwright is determined to unravel the reasons
behind his friend’s death and also to impress Egg. Again, no poison
is found in the dead man’s glass, but nevertheless a post-mortem
finds that Strange was poisoned. This not only seems to mean he was
murdered, but also reopens the question of the first death.
When a clergyman dies at a dinner party thrown by stage actor Sir Charles Cartwright, it
is thought by nearly everyone (Poirot included) to be an accidental death. Shortly afterwards,
however, a second death in suspiciously similar circumstances and with many of the same people
present puts both Poirot and a team of sleuths on the trail of a poisoner whose motive is not clear.
The solution to this mystery is one of Christie’s classic pieces of misdirection and relies on a
plot device which has been widely imitated. Poirot reveals that the first murder - in which the
murderer could not have predicted who would get the poisoned glass and had no motive to kill
the eventual victim - had only been a ”dress rehearsal” for the second murder.
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