Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

It ends where it began. Nearly three decades after Poirot and Hastings solved their first case together at Styles, the two of them are back at the house. Poirot is ailing, and he has not come to reminisce. A killer is at Styles, an unscrupulous and ingenious serial killer, and he needs Hastings beside him to stop more victims dying.

The guest list is a full house: Elizabeth Cole, Daisy Luttrell, Colonel Toby Luttrell, Stephen Norton, Sir William Boyd Carrington, Curtis, Judith Hastings and Doctor Franklin. Any of them could be the murderer, and none of them knows who the next victim will be. Poirot, ailing, has to work with what he cannot say out loud, and Hastings, loyal and slightly lost, is the only person he can trust. The house itself, so familiar from the first mystery, has become a character in its own right.

Kevin Elyot wrote the adaptation with Christie, and Hettie Macdonald directed. Helen Baxendale plays Elizabeth Cole, with Anne Reid and John Standing as the Luttrells, Aidan McArdle as Stephen Norton, Philip Glenister as Sir William Boyd Carrington, Adam Englander as Curtis, Alice Orr-Ewing as Judith Hastings and Shaun Dingwall as Doctor Franklin. Hugh Fraser's Hastings has never mattered more.

There is no way to watch this as just another episode. Suchet had played Poirot for twenty-four years by the time this went out, and the weight of that is in every scene. The house at Styles is a homecoming in the fullest sense, and the episode knows it. Even the smallest moments carry a goodbye.

The ending is not the sort of ending detective series usually dare. It is quiet, and it is final, and it honours everything that came before. Poirot's last case is also his hardest, and the series lets him face it without a single false note. If you have followed him this far, the final scene will stay with you for a long time.