Un meurtre en sommeil (Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie)

Un meurtre en sommeil (A Sleeping Murder) is the 10th episode of season 1 of the French TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. It was produced by Escazal Films and France Télévisions, directed by Eric Woreth and first aired on France 2 on 17 February 2012. It is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel Sleeping Murder

Synopsis
As with other adaptations in Season 1 of this series, the setting is changed to Lille in the 1930s and the investigators are a pair of policemen, commissaire Larosière and his sidekick inspecteur Lampion. In this episode, Sacha escapes from a mental hospital. On the road to Lille she passes a deserted house which she likes very much and rents it on impulse. However the place begins to look very familiar and she keeps flashbacks of being a child in the house, looking down through the banisters and seeing a woman being strangled.

Plot Summary
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read)

Comparison with the original story
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read)
 * The adaptation follows the main premise of the original book fairly closely. Gwenda Reed is in this case a young woman Sacha Poliakov who escapes from a mental hospital. She is not married and there is no Giles Reed. In this adaptation, she is accompanied mostly by Lampion. There are close parallels to most of the main characters.
 * Hélène Poliakov, the woman in Sacha's flashbacks, turns out to be her mother and not her stepmother.
 * The Lily Kimble parallel, Séverina Patrominio, is murdered much earlier. Later it transpires that she had been blackmailing the killer of Hélène Poliakov for all of the 15 years since the event.
 * There are many more murders in this adaptation--these are all potential witnesses or people who know about the killing of Hélène Poliakov. Séverina had made the comment about Hélène packing the wrong types of clothes when she went away. She apparently told Lucien Lebloc (Foster/Mr Sims) and Mrs Lebloc (Edith Pagett) about what she knew. Lebloc also apparently finds Hélène's bones while moving a gazebo to the old location. Lebloc and his wife both later try to blackmail the killer and are killed at various times during the episode.
 * Sacha is actually considered a suspect in the murder of Séverina because she was the last person to see her alive but she is exonerated because she was in custody at the time Lebloc is killed.
 * There is no Jackie Afflick parallel. Guillaume Parisot is a lawyer with an overbearing mother just like Walter Fane and the Balmonts are Erskine parallels in that Mr Balmont last saw Hélène on the night she disappeared and Mrs Balmont is a jealous wife.
 * This adaptation does not use the plot element of the "monkey's paws", Hélène is killed in a different manner. The "Duchess of Malfi" plot element is also not used. The killer doesn't utter any lines after the murder.
 * The graphology plot device is also used here as in the original novel. Hélène's "letter from England" and Séverina's "suicide note" are by the same hand. In addition, here the graphologist exonerates the Balmonts and Guillaume Parisot by comparing those notes with samples of their handwriting.
 * Psychoanalysis is a heavy plot device here, especially the idea of an incestuous father or elder brother.

Cast

 * Antoine Duléry as Jean Larosière
 * Marius Colucci as Émile Lampion
 * Jennifer Decker as Sacha Poliakov
 * Sophie Le Tellier as Mylène Legrand
 * Patrick Descamps as Dr Pierre Chesnais
 * Laurent Fernandez as Lucien Lebloc
 * Rémy Gence as Dr Bourdon
 * Christophe Piret as Guillaume Parisot
 * Denise Aron-Schropfer as Mère Parisot (as Denise Aron-Schröpfer)
 * Serge Dubois as Ménard
 * Olivier Carré as Dr Verdure
 * Florence Bisiaux as Suzanne Lebloc
 * Eric Soubelet as Mr Balmont
 * Murielle Colvez as Madame Gilda Balmont
 * Bertrand De Ruyver as Martin Carot, the graphologist
 * Paty Coquelaëre as Séverina Patrominio
 * Joseph Saïdah as Agent immobilier
 * Christian Joubert as Chauffeur
 * Franck Andrieux as Infirmier
 * Virginie Arnaud as Infirmière
 * Xavier Memeteau as Flic assommé
 * Géraldine Bastien as Hélène Poliakov
 * Andrei Poliakov

Filming locations

 * Fort de Bondues (Fort Lobau), Lille - location of first crime scene
 * Rue Alfred Trannin, Douai (could be the Maison d'hôtes du Théâtre ) - Guillaume Parisot's house
 * Cinéma Ciné Lumières, Rue de la Gare, Armentières - police station