Agatha Christie's Poirot

The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly - S1-E3

Plot hole: Forgiving the implausibility that nobody checks their own watch at the time of the kidnapping, the clock in the living room strikes 12 supposedly ten minutes early: everyone blindly storms from the room when the chimes have not yet ended, and reaches the supposed perpetrator who is by the side entrance. They talk to him briefly and the clocktower signals now the real noon. It's hard to see how 10 full minutes could have passed, and even harder when everybody runs back to the house, to find the clock there signaling 12:11: it took them a mere minute to get there, what took them so long the first time? (00:30:00 - 00:31:30)

Sammo

The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly - S1-E3

Plot hole: When he is taken away from the mansion, Johnnie is hammering with his fists on the car windows, as if he was genuinely in distress and resisting the kidnapping. But as we know, that's not what is happening, he knows his captor well and came willingly. (00:31:25)

Sammo

The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly - S1-E3

Plot hole: In the original story, it is made clear that Mrs. Waverly is the one in the family with the wealth, but it does not go as far as having everyone, guests included, eat plain rice and boiled potatoes, and have the mansion dilapidated with restoration work left unfinished for years. This creates several plot holes: nobody would be interested in asking lavish amounts of ransom money to people who live an impoverished life, and most importantly, the husband would never be able to justify being able to have enough money to suddenly resume construction work on the house (in the original, he simply wanted to use it as spending money).

Sammo

Four and Twenty Blackbirds - S1-E4

Plot hole: In the denouement, Poirot says explicitly that the culprit sent the letter to the victim - but the letter in question, in this dramatization was stated earlier (in a change from Agatha Christie's original) to be an invitation to the art gallery, and the culprit is not the manager/art gallery owner! In the actual short story the letter was a personal message of entirely different nature, written and authored by the culprit.

Sammo

Problem at Sea - S1-E7

Plot hole: In the original novel, the victim's voice is described as "shrill." In here, it's quite the opposite. When the trick for the alibi is performed, the relevant lines are not read by John Normington, thus Poirot's exposition at the end, with the girl providing the voiceover, indirectly further exposes its unbelievability.

Sammo

The Incredible Theft - S1-E8

Plot hole: Hastings came over to assist Poirot in his case, posting guard overnight. He offers to drive Poirot back to the villa since Poirot is in a rush and has figured out of the culprit. Poirot approaches the villa just in time to come across Mrs. Vanderlyn on her way out. Poirot rushes to Hastings then to give chase to the woman but...Hastings has pulled out all the plugs and is cleaning the carburettor, just doing some random maintenance to the car that would take him, in his words "an hour" to bring back to work. On a one-day job, Hastings crippled their own car for no reason whatsoever. This is beyond stupidity.

Sammo

The Dream - S1-E10

Plot hole: Nobody hears the sound of a gun being fired past a door they were waiting almost in front of, and the police cannot tell apart a shot fired point blank by one fired 20 feet away and probably at a very sharp angle. Moreover, the bleeding should be all over his face, since leaning the way it is shown in this adaptation is most likely to lead the victim to fall over, and even leave bloodstains out of the window and on the ground below, which someone would have noticed in the crowded factory.

Sammo

The Dream - S1-E10

Plot hole: Nobody hears the sound of a gun being fired past a door they were waiting almost in front of, and the police cannot tell apart a shot fired point blank by one fired 20 feet away and probably at a very sharp angle. Moreover, the bleeding should be all over his face, since leaning the way it is shown in this adaptation is most likely to lead the victim to fall over, and even leave bloodstains out of the window and on the ground below, which someone would have noticed in the crowded factory.

Sammo

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - S7-E1

Question: The doctor (James) put on a Dictaphone to make the suggestion that Roger Ackroyd was alive at 21:30 hrs. But how could he know that someone (Paton) would pass the door of Ackroyd's study at precisely that moment?

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