He has been able to fit between the mysteries several major stage productions – such as The Merchant of Venice and Long Day's Journey into Night – and other TV appearances, including the lead role in a bio-drama about the ruined tycoon Robert Maxwell and another scandalous financier, Melmotte, in an adaptation of Trollope's The Way We Live Now.īut what has been most impressive about this Christie marathon is not just that he has done other work away from Poirot but that he has continued to do different things in Poirot. Suchet's versatility as an actor – and his careful spacing of the Poirots to average fewer than three a year – has prevented his becoming trapped by the character. Although it is common in music for a pianist to play, for example, a complete Beethoven cycle, and Simon Ruselll Beale has performed in radio dramatisations of all John Le Carre's George Smiley books, such completism is almost impossible in television because of the level of commitment required from both performers – who understandably fear typecasting – and network executives, who are prone to changes of mind and fashion: ITV is unrecognisable in personnel and structure from when the first Poirot was shown almost quarter of a century ago.
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