The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Episode aired Jan 2, 2000
TV-14
1h 39m

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

2.3K

YOUR RATING

Crime Drama Mystery

Poirot comes out of retirement when his industrialist friend is brutally murdered a short while after a local widow who was suspected of killing her husband commits suicide.Poirot comes out of retirement when his industrialist friend is brutally murdered a short while after a local widow who was suspected of killing her husband commits suicide.Poirot comes out of retirement when his industrialist friend is brutally murdered a short while after a local widow who was suspected of killing her husband commits suicide.

See production, box office & company info

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

2.3K

YOUR RATING

See production, box office & company info

See more at IMDbPro

Trivia
When the doctor's sister is seen in the opening scenes she has on a blouse with intricate cutwork near the neck. The blouse is cream color and the cutwork a dark brown. The work is so beautiful it's memorable. In another Christie/Suchet episode, Cat Among the Pigeons, the headmistress of the school is shown wearing the same blouse.

Goofs
In the scene where Ackroyd's butler, Parker, is drunk and staggering down the road, the car behind him stops. Visible for a brief instant is the car's license plate, COU 313. In the very next scene as the car begins its run, the license plate has changed to JHX 473.

Quotes
[Last lines]
Hercule Poirot: I thought I could escape the wickedness of the city by moving to the country. The fields that are green, the singing of the birds, the faces, smiling and friendly. Huh! The fields that are green are the secret burial places of murders most hideous. The birds sing only briefly before some idiot in tweed shoots them. And the faces all smiling and friendly, what do they conceal?

Connections
Referenced in Murder on the Orient Express (2001)

User reviews35

Review

Featured review

5/10

The Murder of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd"

I shan't talk about the plot, because that would ruin it.

Agatha Christie readers could not have possibly have imagined that the adaptation would be this poor. It takes one of Agatha Christie's best novels, and butchers the story, removes half the suspects. It then inserts periods of boring introspection by the detective as he visits his old flat in Whitehaven Mansions.

Moreover, in the novel, most of the characters had some redeeming qualities. All humanity seems to have been stripped out of them in this adaptation. As a result, viewers who have not read the book would probably care even less who the murderer turns out to be.

Fans always knew that this novel would be one of the hardest to adapt, because there is relatively more narrative, and there is less banter than in the Poirot-Hastings stories such as the ABC murders. However, the recent excellent adaptation of Sad Cypress showed that it is possible to convert the moodier, less conversational mysteries to the screen.

A film that is inadequate for first-time viewers and bookreaders alike.

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