Hastings, you fool!

That electric kettle alone could not have possibly been purchased on her salary.

For some reason I never really enjoyed the bulk of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels—I was a Miss Marple partisan—but I’ve been watching the David Suchet series and greatly enjoying it. And Murder She Wrote aside, Miss Marple adaptations never work for me. I tried watching the Angela Lansbury The Mirror Crack’d and bailed ten minutes in, even though Lansbury, of anybody, should be able to play Miss Marple. Anyway my evenings right now go: I sit down on my couch; I think “I wonder what’s on Criterion” as I click over to Poirot; I watch Poirot.

I would say that in what I’m mentally terming “the long 2020” I have watched approximately 9000 hours of detective shows, ranging from the insane (Midsomer Murders) to the relaxing (Murder, She Wrote) to the infuriating (don’t talk to me about Vera… or Grantchester) to the actually good (Columbo). I would put Poirot in between Murder, She Wrote and Columbo. Good but not so good that I can’t put it on while cooking or what have you.

A few theories as …