The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Styles Court is the kind of country house where nothing much happens, until something dreadful does. Hastings is spending the weekend there when his hostess is found dead, poisoned, and he does what any sensible man would do: he sends for Poirot. The detective arrives to find a household full of people who all had reasons to resent Mrs Inglethorp, beginning with her much younger husband Alfred (Michael Cronin), twenty years her junior, and spreading out through John Cavendish (David Rintoul) and his wife Mary (Beatie Edney), Lawrence Cavendish (Anthony Calf), Evie Howard (Joanna McCallum) and Cynthia Murdoch (Allie Byrne). The household is the sort that keeps its feelings indoors, which suits a poisoning very well.

This is the novel that introduced Poirot to readers, and the adaptation treats the material with respect. Poirot walks through the poisoned household piece by piece, asking the questions that make the family squirm. The poison is strychnine, the classic stuff of the era, and it kills quickly and horribly. Japp arrives to keep the official record straight, and Hastings hovers, guilty and helpful in equal measure.

Agatha Christie and Clive Exton wrote it, and Ross Devenish directed. Gillian Barge gives Mrs Inglethorp a sharpness that makes you understand why the house breathed easier after her death, however dreadful that sounds. The production dresses the period beautifully, and Styles Court looks the part of a house with a secret.

It is a poisoning case built on family feeling and money, which is to say a classic. The solution still lands for viewers who know the book, because the pleasure is in the watching. Suchet's Poirot is in full command of the little grey cells, and the manor setting is done beautifully. For anyone meeting the detective here, everything about him is already in place: the vanity and the certainty. A strong start to the third series.