Review of Agatha Christie`s Poirot: Death In The Clouds

Introduction

Death In The Clouds is one of the TV adventures of Agatha Christie’ Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, played by David Suchet. This series will be familiar to many people in the UK, but this DVD is the Region 1, where this series is also very popular. UK viewers will know this series as the ‘ITV’ Agatha Christie movies, while the BBC did the ‘Miss Marple’ adventures.

Our American friends may not know David Suchet that well, having maybe only seen him in this long running Poirot series, and will contrast this with the very different role he played in the action flick Executive Decision without that annoying impeccable moustache.

It is a period piece, with 1930s sets, costumes, cars and planes. David Suchet puts on his soft gently spoken accent throughout.

Video

Being a ’made for TV’ programme, as you expect the DVD is presented in a 4:3 standard ratio, and is split over 10 chapters.

The video quality to my mind seemed overly soft – even a touch blurred in places, and this was far more noticeable when testing the disk on a DVD Rom on a PC monitor rather than a standard player on an RGB connected TV. Too much grain was also noticed.

Also the picture seems too bright in parts, washed out giving a slightly ‘over exposed’ feel to the movie. However you soon get used to it. The shots of the aircraft in the sky shows this fault up the most. Colours are quite dull throughout.

Perhaps the worst fault on the video is that there appeared to be tiny thin vertical lines visible at several points throughout the film, on both the TV and my projector (obviously far more noticeable on this 6ft screen). Several ‘pops’ and ‘clicks’ were also seen, which were the fault of the original master used for the DVD transfer.

About 1 hour 18 minutes into the film, there was a scene which included a shot of some slatted window blinds. There was an appalling visual fault where the picture seemed unable to cope with the image as the picture seemed to break up just over the blinds – the easiest thing I can compare it with is when Des Lynam is wearing a very ‘TV Unfriendly’ jacket and the scrolling appears on screen.

It really doesn’t look like much care was applied to the transfer on this DVD.

Audio

Again you would not expect a 5.1 sound track on this type of DVD and you are not disappointed (yes – there isn’t one!)

Features

Menus are boringly static, but there are several extras surprisingly!

There are several pages of text based information on David Suchet, and the Poirot character. Also about 6 pages of his past stage, screen and TV work. Also there is a little quiz available.

Also the Agatha Christie fans there is much details on the writer itself. Apparently she is only outsold by The Bible and Shakespeare woldwide! There are also links to her website.

Conclusion

I have only seen this series once in the past on TV – and that was one rainy Sunday afternoon when I was visiting my parents! But I have read several of the Agatha Christie books when I was younger.

Typical ‘whodunnits’ are always entertaining, but then you are left wondering when the solution is always spelled out at the final big scene just how any keen eyed viewer could possibly have unravelled all that out for themselves!!

The DVD suffers from a bad transfer unfortunately. As there is no Region 2 out at the present time, fans will have to suffer this version!