Neudacha Puaro (Неудача Пуаро, title in English: Poirot's Misfortune) is a 2002 Russian television series, adapted from the Agatha Christie novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It was adapted and directed by Sergey Ursulyak. Composer: Mikhail Bronner. It contains 5 episodes.
Cast[]
- Konstantin Raykin as Hercule Poirot
- Sergey Makovetskiy as Dr James Sheppard
- Svetlana Nemolyaeva as Mrs Cecil Ackroyd
- Vyacheslav Zholobov as Roger Ackroyd
- Lika Nifontova as Caroline Sheppard
- Sergey Stepanchenko as Inspector Davis
- Konstantin Zheldin as John Parker
- Olga Krasko as Flora Ackroyd
- Yuriy Chursin as Geoffrey Raymond
- Aleksandr Lazarev as Major Blunt
- Elena Podkaminskaya as Ursula Bourne
- Yelena Kozelkova as Elizabeth Russell
- Aleksandr Sirin as Mr Hammond
- Roman Romantsov as Ralph Paton
- Andrei Schchennikov as Charles Kent
- Olga Barnet as Mrs Ferrars
- Nataliya Vdovina as Mrs Folliott
- Evgeniya Dmitrieva as Elsie Dale
- Tatyana Kuznetsova as Emma Cooper
- Feliks Margolin as steward
- Nikita Loginov as gardener
Gallery[]
About[]
The filming took place in the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Each episode begins with a few lines from the "Campbell Playhouse" radio adaptation (1939).
Anna Kovaleva ("Izvestia") noted that "The main success of the series can be considered not only the fact that Ursulyak managed to convey the style of Christie herself in a completely mysterious way — the slowness, the unhurriedness, the tendency to maximize the detail and materiality of the surrounding world — but also the cast. Konstantin Raykin managed not only to give a completely clear psychological picture of Poirot, but also to make him much more eccentric than the rest of the world's Poirots, partly playing him in Chaplin's famous manner."
In his 2016 book "Agatha Christie on Screen" (2016) Mark Aldridge described the series as a "strange clash of cultures" and noted the somewhat caricatured portrayal of Poirot, but praised the adherence to the novel's structure, the balance between light and dark moments in the narrative, and "several striking moments, including the thunderstorm that opens the series and is referenced in the quoted dialogue."