The Labours of Hercules

Poirot's pursuit of an infamous art thief leads him to a snowbound hotel in the Swiss Alps. The quarry is one problem; the hotel is another. It is full of people with secrets, and somewhere among them is a familiar face from his past, which complicates a professional errand considerably. He came for the thief. He stays for everything else. The Alps in winter are a long way from his usual patch, and the episode enjoys putting him there.

The hotel holds a full company: Sir Anthony Morgan, Harold Waring, Lucinda Le Mesurier, Dr Burton, Ted Williams and Katrina, with a Chief Inspector, a Policewoman and Inspector Lementeuil keeping things official. The snow keeps everyone where they are, which is exactly how Christie liked her suspects: trapped, and lying about something. Poirot has to sort the thief's chaos from the hotel's own mysteries, and the two keep tangling.

Guy Andrews wrote the adaptation with Christie, and Andy Wilson directed. Patrick Ryecart is Sir Anthony Morgan, Rupert Evans plays Harold Waring, Lorna Nickson Brown is Lucinda Le Mesurier, Tom Chadbon is Dr Burton, Tom Austen is Ted Williams and Fiona O'Shaughnessy is Katrina, with Stephen Frost, Isobel Middleton and Nicholas McGaughey as the police.

The title gives the whole thing a mythic air, though the mystery itself is very much of this world. One thief. One snowbound hotel. And a past that refuses to stay buried. The familiar face from Poirot's own history is the sharpest detail in the episode, the one that turns a professional job into something personal.

It is a handsome, wintry episode, the kind where the setting does half the work. The cold isolation of the hotel gives the mystery a clean, hard edge, and the Alps suit the story's scale. And the last scene leaves Poirot facing the cost of his own past, which is not something every case lets him do.