After the Funeral

Richard Abernethie's funeral is barely over when the family starts dying around him. The old man had disinherited his sole beneficiary and spread his considerable fortune among the rest of the family just before he died, which is the kind of will that makes relatives thoughtful. Then, the day after the funeral, his niece is murdered too. Poirot is called in to find out whether the two deaths share a single cause. The reading of the will is the true funeral; the service was just the rehearsal.

But the gathering of Abernethies is a textbook Christie family, with money and grievances in equal supply and each one of them holding a reason to want the old man's arrangements undone. George Abernethie, Maude, Helen, Rosamund; they sit together through the reading of the will and then try not to look at one another. Each of them heard something at the funeral that they are pretending not to have heard. Gilbert Entwhistle is the family solicitor; Inspector Morton does the official work; Dr Larraby handles the medical side; and a vicar hovers at the edges of the grief.

Michael Fassbender plays George Abernethie, with Anna Calder-Marshall as Maude, John Carson as Richard Abernethie, Geraldine James as Helen, Fiona Glascott as Rosamund, Robert Bathurst as Gilbert Entwhistle, Philip Anthony as the vicar, Kevin Doyle as Inspector Morton and Dominic Jephcott as Dr Larraby. Agatha Christie wrote it with Philomena McDonagh, and Maurice Phillips directed. David Suchet is Poirot.

The funeral is the smartest thing in the title, bringing everyone together at the moment the money is about to move. The niece's death lands in the middle of the family, and suddenly everyone's memory of the funeral sharpens. Murder follows the money, and the episode plays the family's politeness off against its greed until something gives. Every overheard word does double duty. It is solid, professional work in the mode the series does best.