The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Episode aired Jan 2, 2000
1h 39m

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

2.1K

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.

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

2.1K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Andrew Grieve
Writers
- Agatha Christie(based on the novel by)
- Clive Exton(dramatized by)
Stars

Top credits

See production, box office & company info

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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 reviews33

Review

Top review

5/10

A Great Disappointment

For those of you who have NOT read the novel by the same name by Agatha Christie, you may indeed think my criticism of this adaptation somewhat harsh. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is easily one of the greatest mystery novels and particularly one of Christie's best ever written. It is a great novel and is definitely a hard one to truly bring to the screen(small screen in this case)entirely faithful. Allowances must be made, but the script from this adaptation meanders a good deal from much of the source material. I did not like the framing device used. Why not have the narrator in the novel narrate? How bout that hokey ending with its proverbial "shootout" to get the audience's attention? And what about Poirot cracking the case in question? These major departures from the book greatly diminished my favor with this film. It is done very stylishly. The acting is as always very good. David Suchet makes the best Poirot and certainly the most faithful to the books. But this mystery has been twisted and contorted too much so that I can only faintly see Christie. What a shame! I would have really liked to see how Suchet and company could tackle this innovative novel. I came, I saw, I sighed!

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