- Radio Times
- Review by:
- Jane Rackham
If you’re frantically seeking refuge from the Olympian onslaught, here is your chance to escape to pre-Second World War Dover with David Suchet’s Belgian detective. First shown last Christmas, it starts with a young agency typist (Jaime Winstone) arriving at a private residence for a 3pm appointment with a Miss Pedmarsh (the late Anna Massey). What she finds instead is an unknown dead man and four clocks stopped at exactly 4.13pm.
The plot’s a bit absurd, but the cast is top-notch: Tom Burke, Geoffrey Palmer, Frances Barber and Phil Daniels, who, as Inspector Hardcastle, steals the show with his exasperation at Poirot’s foibles.
About this programme
1/4. The Belgian sleuth is summoned when Colin Race is distracted from an investigation into a spy ring by the discovery of a murder victim surrounded by stopped clocks. The body was found at the home of blind former teacher Millicent Pebmarsh, but when a second death is reported, Poirot realises the man was killed elsewhere and brought to the scene, though the neighbours prove unhelpful eyewitnesses. Mystery, starring David Suchet, with Anna Massey, Jaime Winstone, Lesley Sharp, Phil Daniels, Geoffrey Palmer and Tessa Peake-Jones.
Cast and crew
Cast
- Hercule Poirot
- David Suchet
- Sheila Webb
- Jaime Winstone
- Annabel Larkin
- Olivia Grant
- Miss Martindale
- Lesley Sharp
- Miss Pebmarsh
- Anna Massey
- Fiona Hanbury
- Anna Skellern
- Lt. Colin Race
- Tom Burke
- Sven Hjerson
- Andrew Havill
- Mrs Swinburne
- Victoria Wicks
- Nora Brent
- Sinead Keenan
- Vice Admiral Hamling
- Geoffrey Palmer
- Inspector Hardcastle
- Phil Daniels
- Constable Jenkins
- Ben Righton
- Valerie Bland
- Tessa Peake-Jones
- Merlina Rival
- Frances Barber
- Mrs Hemmings
- Beatie Edney
- Rachel Waterhouse
- Abigail Thaw
- Matthew Waterhouse
- Guy Henry
- May
- Phoebe Strickland
- Jenny
- Isabella Parriss
- Joe Bland
- Jason Watkins
- Christopher Mabbutt
- Stephen Boxer
- Professor Purdy
- Andrew Forbes
Crew
- Director
- Charles Palmer
- Writer
- Stewart Harcourt
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