The John Malkovich-led BBC three-part miniseries, which is now available on Amazon, is based on Christie's 1936 novel of the same name. It's also British screenwriter Sarah Phelps' "most thorough teardown yet, and this time she’s so suffocatingly revisionist that what’s left isn’t really Christie at all," says Mike Hale. "The insistence on making everything grimmer and grosser is almost comically complete." He adds: "Malkovich performs valiantly, showing admirable restraint and subtlety and making credible the scenes in which Poirot demonstrates un-Christie-like resentment and anger. It’s a downer of a role, though, stripped of all its humor (partly through the removal of Hastings, Poirot’s square-jawed Watson)." ALSO: The ABC Murders feels like a post-Dickens True Detective.
TOPICS: The ABC Murders, BBC, Prime Video, Agatha Christie, John Malkovich, Sarah Phelps