Agatha Christy's Poirot faces two mysteries this season. The first is in The Big Four, which involves a worldwide conspiracy to accelerate World War II (which the characters do not know about, obviously, since this is set before WWII!). Poirot is on the trail of a series of murders, all related to an international Peace Party and its members. The Big Four, a mysterious group of four bent on worldwide chaos, may be behind the murders. Poirot struggles to identify the members of the big four and the ingenious methods of they have employed in their killings. Haunting each crime scene and place of interest is a reporter who is receiving cryptic clues about the big four from a mysterious source. This episode is pretty cool. Especially nice are the scenes where Poirot spends time figuring out how certain murders where committed, whether we see him contemplating and researching in his study or carefully examining a crime scene. This episode also has a really great and shocking opening scene that I really enjoyed. Beyond that, the whole show is big spoilers, so please, watch it for yourself.
The second episode is entitled Dead Man's Folly. Poirot is summoned to Nasse House, a big mansion where rich people live. He is called there by his friend, Ariadne Oliver, who is arranging a murder hunt during the festivities of a private summer fair there. She is staging the fake murder and planting clues for the guests to try and solve. But something is off. She believes that different people that are helping to plan the fair are trying to influence how she plans the fake murder, and she has the worst feeling that real murder may be involved. Poirot is willing to hang around and investigate, and the owners of the house are happy to have a famous guy like him around. Things do go a little haywire, but maybe not in the way you would expect. Poirot ends up with quite the grand mystery to unravel. This episode's rundown of what is going on by Poirot is epic, and has some great editing of clips that let you see what he is talking about. Ariadne Oliver is a quirky and fun character who has some nice rapport with Poirot. Other characters, including the owner of the house, his wife, and her cousin who happens to drop by for a visit all give nice performances and are interesting as well.
I prefer the 2nd episode over the first, although neither lives up to the first Poirot story I ever saw that got me hooked on the show, Murder on the Orient Express. Poirot continues to be an awesome character though. He's so polite, yet does an amazing job when he yells at people also. He seems so innocent at times. You might think he is an asperger-hero like Sherlock, but he really isn't. He has a genius-level understanding of emotions and relationships, and although he may appear like Sherlock at times, he feels emotions deeply too. His politeness is genuine.
This season was very enjoyable. Poirot is such a great character. Alan Cumming summed him up really well in the intro to the season, "There are detectives who have badges, police cars, bosses who don't appreciate them, partners who keep them on their toes. They've come up through the ranks, some have a university education. They're devoted to their work, but also enjoy, friends, family, outside interests. They have good days and bad days, like the rest of us. There are detectives, and then, there is Hercule Poirot."
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