Summary
- Kenneth Branagh’s adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories could be better suited for streaming TV, allowing him to take his time and avoid rushing the stories.
- Streaming platforms like Netflix are attracting big names to short-run series, making it more likely that Branagh could bring in top talent for a full season of Poirot episodes.
- Branagh should stay true to the original Agatha Christie stories and resist adding his own flair, as the original tales are well-crafted and still relevant to modern audiences.
Kenneth Branagh has had a long and storied career in film. He is an actor, writer, producer, and everything in between. Therefore, people were excited when he chose to take on Agatha Christie‘s Poirot stories. He has now made three of them to varying levels of acclaim. But what if he was given a different platform on which to present his adaptations?
The fact is that Branagh might have a better chance of finding his voice by utilizing the medium of streaming TV. There are plenty of reasons for this, but the main one is the ability to take his time instead of rushing his stories. Christie has been adapted into several mediums, and film may not have been the most successful.
Adapting Classic Stories to TV
Agatha Christie was a prolific writer. Her most famous creation may be Hercule Poirot, the strangely brilliant investigator. He is enigmatic with a disdain for many of the Holmesian methods. Christie made it a point to make his pompous personality and character a main focus of the stories, adding more characters and backstories to his life.
In many cases, the main reason for reading Poirot was to see what kinds of groups he would run into. Whether they be on a train, in foreign climes, or during a séance in Venice, he has appeared in over thirty books, countless short stories, and even plays. When people think of some of the great detectives in literature, their first or second choice will be Hercule Poirot.
Since the books were released, there have been countless adaptations in all versions of media. However, some of the most beloved have been through the BBC Radio series. These often included John Moffat as the detective. One of the most beloved adaptations featuring Moffat was Murder on the Orient Express, which was released in 1993. The series told the full story but broke it up into six half-hour episodes. It had a full cast and sound effects and was a full-immersive experience. But the fact that one story could be spread out in fully-realized and self-contained episodes was fascinating. Not to mention that the format lends itself to mysteries, as each episode can end on a cliffhanger.
It bodes well for a similar adaptation.
Bringing Big Names to Streaming
Having been in the business a long time, Branagh has no trouble enticing actors to his projects. The question is whether he could bring them in for a full season of episodes. With the rise of streaming and big-budget adaptations such as the recent and successful The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix, there would most likely be no issues with bringing them in.
The questions are often who will be cast, how long will they stay, and can the streaming services afford them? Right now, though they often scream poverty, these services are continuously enticing big names to short-run series. The good thing about the character of Poirot is that characters only need to be involved for one season. If the series were to continue, the only consistent character would need to be Branagh’s Poirot.
The idea of having Poroit’s cases become a complete streaming series also gives actors a chance to check out whether they like the format of the show before committing. As long as Branagh can get decent names and ratings for his first season, the bigger names will begin showing interest. Plus, big names love being associated with classics. For some, it is the closest they can get to acting on stage. It’s one of the reasons so many of them sign on to retellings of classic Shakespeare, no matter how strange an adaptation it might be.
The Format and One Thing to Avoid
A Haunting in Venice
- Release Date
- September 15, 2023
- Director
- Kenneth Branagh
- Cast
- Kelly Reilly, Michelle Yeoh, Kenneth Branagh, Jamie Dornan, Emma Laird, Tina Fey
- Main Genre
- Crime
- Tagline
- Death is just the beginning
The main thing that needs to be stressed is how the show is broken up and how many episodes there will be. For a short-run series, it is often best to keep it to a light six to eight episodes. This seems about right for a Poirot mystery that has a set number of twists and turns. In fact, if Branagh had attempted to create Murder on the Orient Express as a show instead of a film, he could do worse than follow the slicing done by the BBC Radio series.
Kenneth Branagh has a habit of trying to add some of his own flair to these stories. He’ll add a relationship or some other piece not in the original telling. However, the original stories are masterfully crafted by Agatha Christie and were written recently enough that they still make sense. This is unlike the aforementioned Shakespeare, whose work is constantly being reworked into modern settings because modern audiences can’t tell what is happening in the original form.
Therefore, if Branagh can stay true to the original story while upping the interest by using well-known actors and unique set pieces, he would be golden. Add to that his wonderful ability to tell a story, and his time would be best spent allowing audiences to enjoy the pacing. A streaming series would put him in that rare place of not having to cut content, but, as already said, it does mean that a writer/ director/producer will feel the need to add their own plot flair. If Branagh can keep himself in check, we could have an amazing series that consists of one story per season.
Branagh’s A Haunting In Venice is now available to stream on Hulu. If you’re interested in MovieWeb’s very own interviews with the team behind A Haunting in Venice, including cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, check out the video below.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
