List of Agatha Christie's Poirot Episodes

List Of Agatha Christie's Poirot Episodes

The following is a list of episodes for the British crime drama Agatha Christie's Poirot. It first aired on 8 January 1989 and all episodes have aired on ITV1 (formerly, ITV until 2001).

Episodes run for either approximately 50 minutes, or approximately 100 minutes (the latter are marked "feature-length" in the table below). The shorter episodes are based on Christie's short stories featuring Poirot, many published in the 1920s. The TV adaptations were considerably embellished from the original stories' plots and were set in 1936 instead of the 1920s et al. as is shown by the inclusion of actual historical events such as Fred Perry's win at the French Open and the Jarrow March.

The longer episodes are based on Christie's novels. The chronology of these episodes differs significantly from that of the novels and, as with the shorter episodes, some stories whose book versions were set in other decades are moved to the year, 1936. Of these filmed versions only "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (based on Christie's first Poirot novel), was taken out of the previously established time-line that the series had created and was set back in 1917 (although the novel was set in 1916). It deals with the five detective's first mystery in England. After this, all episodes returned to the previously established time-line. Another episode, "The Chocolate Box", in which Poirot recalls a case from his early career in the Belgian police force, also includes numerous flashbacks from the early 1900s with a younger-looking Poirot. Another episode, "Hickory Dickory Dock", has a flashback 10 years earlier in 1926, where Japp appears, investigating a murder. "Murder on the Orient Express" was supposed to be set five years after 1933, meaning it was set in either 1938 or 1939.