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Locos in The ABC Murders


Harlequin
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The problem with presenting a play exactly as Shakespeare (or is it Shakspear, or....) had written it is that it was written in different English for a different audience in a different type of theatre.

Unless you can do that it has to be adapted to suit modern tastes so is not original.

The Globe productions in London must be the closest, anything on TV has, by needs, to be differently presented.

 

It's like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Totally unreadable unless you are fluent in the language of the day.

 

Keith

 

Personally I prefer Shakespeare to be at least trying to be "historical". It doesn't have to be in Tudor English, just be of the time and understandable. Even Mel Gibson's Hamlet was watchable IMO.

 

If it's set in a more modern setting such as a mythical Nazi or Communist regime then it's an instant turn off. The same goes for adaptions that are "Urban" or "Street". I don't want to hear Romeo rapping....

 

Yes. That's a thing. There really is a rap version of Romeo & Juliet.

 

 

 

Jason

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Perhaps to return to the title of this thread "Locos in The ABC Murders", my own feeling is that I don't mind "wrong" locos if they are real and not modified by CGI. Looking at pre CGI films the footage of locos is often very good, though maybe out of area/time. I hate George Formby, but there are some great railway shots in his films. You want to see a genuine Crosti boilered loco in action, watch Frank Sinatra's "Von Ryan's Express". Even the "Titfield Thunderbolt" has some good, interesting  footage. I was always amused by "From Russia With Love" where the day time Railway shots were European, but the night time shots show a Stanier loco storming past a Midland signal box, shot through a green filter to make it look foreign!

 

I saw the Albert Finney version of "Murder on the Orient Express" in a cinema during the mid 1970s when I lived in what was then Yugoslavia. In the film, the murder is committed then the train gets stuck in a snow drift somewhere between Belgrade and Zagreb. When the Poirot character is asked to investigate the murder he initially refuses saying "The local police are more than capable of handling the case". This was met with gales of laughter from the Yugoslav audience.

 

So for me, the rail content in the current BBC TV series are just filler but of no long term interest. At least they don't distract me from the plot!  :jester:      

 

Ian Major.

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Although the ITV Poirot adaptations would make one think that everywhere looked like Horsted Keynes or Blue Anchor (The latter was used at least once) in the 1930s one thing I applauded with their use of SR stock is that at least it was mostly kept consisted throughout an episode. The only real exceptions to that I can recall are one instance of a King Arthur (777) becoming a U, and another of a 4-SUB coach alternating with a Maunsell one between shots, but beyond that I recall they kept things consistently Southern rather than trying to make the Southern look Western, if you get my drift? The Stock would be Southern, as would the stations and the staff - Almost a 'What if the Southern had been larger' scenario!

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As a regular watcher of film/tv Agatha Christie adaptations/dramatisations I approached this one with an interest although not necessarily an entirely open mind.  I have enjoyed, Peter Ustinov. Albert Finney, and David Suchet's interpretation of Poirot although I've avoided the Kenneth Branagh version because I probably couldn't have stopped laughing at his moustache - dreadfully unlike the fictional Poirot's.  So first came this new Poirot and alas, to my ears, speaking much of the time with an accent which reminded me of Owen the farmer in 'The Vicar of Dibley' tv comedy series - in fact on occasion if I closed my eyes I could visualise the late Roger Lloyd Pack speaking the lines.

 

Then we had the railway scenes - well right from the off with a single line running through a large conifer forest 'between London and Andover' it was obvious that this would not be an area where any care had been taken with even a minimal attempt at authenticity, and the railway aspect got even worse with a most peculiar ontrain Ticket Inspector and 'Andover station' and culminated in the chase of the red herring across a totally unbelievable railway scene populated by some very peculiar trains and incomprehensible signals - mind you the latter was really only to be expected in view of wider misunderstandings of signalling so I took no notice of that piece of nonsense.  But why on earth they kept using a wholly North American whistle for the trains mystified me?  

 

Overall quite why various 'dark' and fetishistic elements were introduced to the story was, I'll readily admit, quite beyond me - they made a couple of sub-plots on their own of course but yet again the writer lost the plot and ended up inventing some of her own.

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I just spotted a ticket collector touting what appears to be a 'Setright' or 'Gibson' bus ticket machine.......

 

SWMBO has it on iPlayer as I type, whilst catching up with RMweb happenings and browsing eBay for things I don't need and maybe not even want.

 

Time to put the kettle on and inspect mi BRM free paintbrushes.

 

The ticket machine was a TIM machine

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Given how us railway enthusiasts have picked the railway content to bits, it did make me wonder if the BUF content was as inaccurate ......... are there, even now, fascists busily bemoaning the incorrect shades of blue and red on the lapel badges, or the typeface on the posters?

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Although the BBC will get the plaudits or brickbats for this production, they had little to do with it apart from stumping up some of the cash as it was made by Mammoth Screen* under the eye of the Agatha Christie Estate. At least it was set in 1933 and not the 1960s as some Christie story adaptions.

 

 

Keith

 

Most of Agatha's stories were set contemporaneously with the time she was writing them - so her later stories were indeed set in the 60s and 70s (which would have made Poirot a very old man by then!).

 

To make matters worse, Agatha wrote 'Curtain' (the story where Poirot dies) in 1947 although it wasn't released until she realised she was too ill to write anymore. In the meantime she had written a number of other Poirot stories, so 'Curtain' is set a couple of decades before some of Poirot's other cases!

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Poirot has been "portrayed" on film by Peter Ustinov (David Niven played his sidekick), Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh.  

 

Also (and first) by Tony Randall in the original version of the ABC Murders.

 

Incidentally, this was the only occasion when Poirot and Miss Marple met on film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pitSKSw_93o

 

 

 

However David Suchet met Joan Hickson at Kingswear(?) station to mark the 100th anniversary of Agatha's birth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVWOEYTe7Yc

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What about that dodgy badge on his left lapel?

Wasn't it the badge of the sturmabteilung (aka'brown shirts')?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

 

Maybe I'm confusing one programme with another; I didn't really watch the programme, though SWMBO did.

Edited by leopardml2341
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No, it was the badge of the British Union of Fascists, home-grown, rather than German, vermin, who, in 1933, when the programme was set, were busily re-inventing themselves as a street-fighting and silly uniforms party, the New Party from which it was descended having failed miserably in the previous general election. I'm guessing that the author of the programme was drawing a none-too-subtle parallel with our own times.

Edited by Nearholmer
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I've just finished watching this...in the background while modelling which might have coloured my views of it.

 

I haven't read any Poirot books or seen any other TV/film adaptations so I have something of an open mind, and I did rather enjoy it.

 

I also appreciated the fact that the characters didn't seem to be travelling everywhere on Mk 1's.

 

However....the signal goes green/train appears/signal goes red scene was a bit hard to take seriously, especially when the trains looked like they were from a train simulator.

 

And I am no expert in ticket machines but would a guard be selling any kind of tickets in those days on a train like that?

 

There must be a fair chunk of the audience who have noticed that Doncaster is a little larger than the station portrayed.

 

However, the thing that jarred me most and in fact made me think for a moment that they were starting a bizarre flash-forwards to the present day was the shot of the interior of a modern concrete section lined underground tunnel. Maybe I'm kidding myself but I would have thought that would look a little incongruous to those without much interest in railways. It can't have been hard to get some footage of the large bulk of the underground network that looks pretty much like it did in the 30's, surely?

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I managed to capture this from Episode 3 at about 20mins 38secs:

attachicon.gifABC3a.png

 

And this from Episode 3 at about 21mins 13secs:

attachicon.gifABC3b.png

(Processed slightly to improve clarity)

looks like a hawksworth tendered early-mid 1930s build castle (large cab front windows) in BR livery (no firebox lining) with LNER on tender.

Quite odd! I did wonder at first whether they were spliced shots of 5043, but the loco in question has a single chimney. Given the LNER setting (indeed the final scenes on the tracks appeared to be copenhagen fields) they could have chosen an A3, or V2 or B1. I guess GWR has less complex external valve gear!

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By complete coincidence, on Sunday I found the book on my bookshelf!

 

There's very little train travel in the book at all, other than when Poirot, Hastings and Crome go to Torquay and back.

 

(And of course there are no fascists, or fetishism, both of which I felt distracted from the story on TV, without adding anything to it).

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looks like a hawksworth tendered early-mid 1930s build castle (large cab front windows) in BR livery (no firebox lining) with LNER on tender.

Quite odd! I did wonder at first whether they were spliced shots of 5043, but the loco in question has a single chimney. Given the LNER setting (indeed the final scenes on the tracks appeared to be copenhagen fields) they could have chosen an A3, or V2 or B1. I guess GWR has less complex external valve gear!

 

Old thread I know, but I ended up re-watching this recently.  The tone of the whole thing was a bit of an adjustment, being darker and more moody, though I quite liked it.  The train scenes were annoying though...  The bit which is probably meant to be Copenhagen Fields is actually in Leeds, you see it on the way in to the station from the south; it's the long-abandoned viaduct into what was the old Leeds Central Station; the ground in front of it, where the action takes place, is bare and about to be built on.  The CGI bit in the East End at the start worked for me (even if it did look more West Riding, like the old GNR out of Halifax), and I thought they did a good bit of selective camera work in Saltaire (portraying Andover) to miss out the overhead wiring on the adjacent Airedale line.  Though some odd choices, it looks pretty enough around Embsay so I wasn't sure why they needed to insert a shot of Knaresborough, but hey-ho.

 

It did strike me that a bit of location filming on one of the preserved railways involved (KWVR, NYMR, E&B) would have nailed the scenes which involved so much CGI.  Must be easier to pay for some overworked 20 year olds to get eye-strain in a computer room for six months, than build some fake colour-light signals and have the actors running around Grosmont or Keighley for an afternoon...

 

Oddly enough what came to mind was the episode of "Ripper Street" with the train crash; yes, the trains were a little wrong for the setting, but real trains and actors had been filmed, and the backdrops were inserted with CGI around the real locations on the Great Central, which meant the final outcome was quite believable to look at.

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Finally caught up with this after SWMBO had recorded it over a year ago, watched episode 3 last night and I too was distracted by the main CGI railway sequence. It really was poor in relation to the rest of the show and did detract from it in my opinion. 

 

Still made me smile every time I saw a loco snaking through the NYMR though

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