Third Girl - Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations

Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations

A TV adaptation by Peter Flannery for the series Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Suchet as Poirot and Zoë Wanamaker as Ariadne Oliver was filmed in April and May 2008. It aired on 28 September of the same year on ITV, except for the STV Region which for some unexplained reason has refused point blank to show the final Poirot case at all (despite it showing the other 2 cases). The adaptation takes huge liberties with the novel, these including:

• Moving the 1960s setting to the 1930s, in accordance with the other episodes in the series.
• Omitting the characters of Dr. Stillingfleet and Miss Lemon.
• Omitting the subterfuge of Mary Restarick posing as Frances Cary. Instead, Mary Restarick is made to be Norma's mother, who committed suicide by slitting her wrists when Norma was a little child.
• Replacing the character of Louise Charpentier with a new character, Lavinia Seagram, who becomes Norma's nanny. She is murdered in exactly the same way Mary Restarick committed suicide, instead of being pushed out of a window like Louise Charpentier in the novel. The motive of her murder remains the same as Louise's in the novel - she is killed because she threatened to reveal the true identity of Robert Orwell, the man posing as Andrew Restarick.
• Having Frances Cary become the half-sister to Norma. Norma's old teacher, Miss Battersby, had an affair with Andrew Restarick (Norma's father), and together they bore Frances. When Miss Battersby learned of Robert Orwell and his deception, she told her daughter, who found a way to become Orwell's co-conspirator. Frances tried to get Norma hanged for a crime that she never committed in order to inherit her half-sister's fortune.
• Having Norma's disoriented state being blamed on the trauma caused by her mother's suicide. She is never given drugs as in the novel. Her fragile mind is manipulated by Frances, who planted a knife in her room before Norma discovered Nanny Seagram's body, and then removed it afterwards. This made Norma believe that she had committed the murder.
• The character of David Baker being spared at the end, unlike in the novel, in which he was murdered. In the adaptation, he serves as Norma's love interest, whereas in the novel, Norma's love interest is Dr. Stillingfleet.
• Ariadne Oliver's book Lady Don't Fall Backwards - this is a shout-out to the Hancock's Half Hour TV episode "The Missing Page", in which Tony Hancock tries to find out who committed the murder in a book he'd just read with a missing page (mirrored by the concierge, Alf Renny, who tells Mrs Oliver that he'd read her book four times and still had no idea who did it).