Agatha Christie’s Family Defends Kenneth Branagh’s Portrayal of Hercule Poirot Despite Criticism from Critics

At the start of A Haunting In Venice, Hercule Poirot — formerly the world’s most famous detective — is a forlorn figure: retired and living in exile.

But by the end, we see him sitting on the roof of his palazzo, consulting a potential client. Et voila! He’s back in business.

It’s a big hint of what Kenneth Branagh, who plays Agatha Christie’s most famous creation, might do next… and it can be revealed that Christie’s great-grandson is also ‘hopeful’ that the actor will carry on detecting.

Critics were mixed about A Haunting In Venice, which added horror-inspired flourishes to the classic whodunnit, and it had limited success at the box office.

However, Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard, who runs Agatha Christie Ltd, which controls the rights to her books, doesn’t think Disney has reached the end of this particular chapter.

In fact, he happens to be a very big fan of Kenneth Branagh, who follows actors including David Suchet, John Malkovich, Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov in playing the fastidious Belgian with his egg-shaped head and flashing green eyes.

Prichard said: ‘I very much hope that there will be more Poirot movies with Ken. I don’t think that you have to stop at three.’

He added that the decision to cast Branagh was a ‘no-brainer’. ‘One of the greatest — if not the greatest actor — in Britain, playing Poirot? Yes please!’

Of those gigantic, curling grey moustaches — which not everyone loved — he says: ‘Ken has toned them down a bit from the first film. They may carry on in that direction; you know, getting a little smaller with each film.

‘But, as you know, my great- grandmother was cross about Albert Finney’s moustache in Orient Express, because Poirot was supposed to have one of the greatest moustaches in Europe. Well, Ken kind of does.’ He accepts that not everyone was thrilled by the non-traditional approach to A Haunting In Venice, which was loosely based on her little-known novella A Halloween Party.

‘I think it was deliberate to take a pivot into something which people did not know.

‘If we’d just done another big exotic set-piece one, like Evil Under The Sun or Appointment With Death, people would have not felt surprised or excited.

‘Michael Green, the writer, wanted to come up with something very different — both in terms of tone and of story.’

He won’t be drawn on which book will be filmed next, but chances are it’ll be something more traditional — again with a sprinkling of stars.

A Haunting In Venice featured Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey and Call My Agent’s Camille Cottin.

It took $122 million globally at the box office. Its predecessor, Death On The Nile (hit by Covid and the Armie Hammer scandal), took $137 million, and the first of the Branagh Poirots, Murder On The Orient Express, took a storming $352 million

In the meantime, Christie addicts can get their next fix from BBC One, which is showing Murder Is Easy from December 27.

Old flames, reunited

You can’t blame Juliette Binoche being apprehensive about working on The Taste Of Things, a period drama about a love affair between a cook and her employer. After all, the actor cast as her lover was Benoit Magimel — with whom she had a passionate affair 25 years ago.

The pair  make a convincing couple on screen, but off it they’d lost touch almost entirely, despite sharing a daughter Hana, 24.

Binoche didn’t say no when he was cast, but told herself: ‘Let’s see what fate does.’ She added: ‘I worried how it was going to evolve, of course. It’s as if I didn’t know him any more, because we met like 25 years before.’

She needn’t have worried. ‘We helped each other and love came through. Because it was not our words, it was easier in a way.’

The film is out in February.

Pity poor Dawn French. She told the Off Menu podcast: ‘I once gave up bread in an effort to lose some weight. I gave up bread for a year. And I gave up cheese the same year. And then Satan, who works at my deli, made cheesebread… and I was lost.’ 

It seems that Russell T. Davies wasn’t exactly jumping for joy when Nolly — his pet project about former Crossroads star Noele Gordon — was given its debut on ITVX earlier this year, rather than on the more popular terrestrial channel, ITV1.

‘Let’s be honest: not many people can find ITVX — what the hell is it?’ asked Davies, showrunner on the BBC’s Doctor Who. ‘I’m delighted Nolly is now getting a proper terrestrial airing, three nights in a row, on ITV1 over Christmas.’

Davies was a huge fan of the mercurial Ms Gordon, played in Nolly by Helena Bonham Carter.

The series will air in its entirety on ITV1, from December 27 through to December 29.

Anjana steals the limelight from Olivia 

It takes a lot to steal a film from under the noses of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley — but it appears that that’s what Anjana Vasan has gone and done.

The 36-year-old actress, who scooped an Olivier award for her role in A Streetcar Named Desire (opposite Paul Mescal) back in April, appears alongside Colman and Buckley in Wicked Little Letters (due to open here on February 23).

The film tells the true story of poison-pen letters which became a cause celebre in Littlehampton in the 1920s — and not everyone loves the potty-mouthed language. After its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, critics were divided: some calling it filthy but fun, others sniffing that it was simply feeble. But everyone was in agreement about Vasan: praising her performance as police officer Gladys Moss, who believes Buckley’s character, Rose, is wrongly accused.

Vasan was raised in Singapore but came to the UK to study at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, and has lived here ever since. She is being compared to Buster Keaton for her impeccable comic timing in the picture.

She says: ‘I often feel like real life is weirder than fiction, and this story was a perfect example.’

You may have previously seen Vasan in Black Mirror, Killing Eve and the award-winning We Are Lady Parts.

Now that all’s quiet, Lesley’s after another German classic… 

Scottish triathlete Lesley Paterson was one of the sweetest surprises of last year’s awards season, thanks to her role as screenwriter and producer of the film All Quiet On The Western Front, which ran off with seven BAFTAs and four Oscars.

Paterson, pictured right — who had made huge sacrifices to keep the rights to the book — tripped into actor Jamie Dornan’s arms on Bafta night and stayed out partying with James Corden and others until 4am at the Oscars.

It was a joyous period, although she confided to me in the early hours that she was ‘gutted’ to be pipped to Best Adapted Screenplay by Sarah Polley, who won the Oscar for Women Talking.

So what comes next? I hear that she is in the process of acquiring the rights to another huge German language book — Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl — which she intends to turn into a movie.

Published in 1946, the book — which has sold more than 10 million copies — chronicles Frankl’s time as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. Filming could start as soon as spring.

Paterson, 43 — a five-time champion in Xterra, an extreme triathlon involving mountain biking and trail hiking — still trains every day (she says that’s the way her motor runs) and has been taking on some training sessions to pay the bills. But her real focus now is on film work.

She first fell in love with All Quiet … as a schoolgirl in Stirling, and bought the rights 17 years ago. Determined to make a movie out of it, she used her triathlon winnings to fund the project, at one stage even competing with a broken shoulder.

She and writing partner Ian Stokell came up with an English script, which was then revised by producer Edward Berger — and translated back into German.

At the Academy Awards, the movie lost out on Best Picture to Everything Everywhere All At Once. But it still took home four Oscars, having been nominated for nine, including Cinematography and Best International Feature Film.

Musician Jon Batiste has been in London to bang the drum for the moving Netflix documentary American Symphony, which tells the story of the year (2022) in which he was nominated for 11 Grammy awards — and his partner, author Suleika Jaouad, relapsed with leukaemia after ten years of remission.

The couple married on the eve of her second bone marrow transplant, and she continues to recover, meaning that she did not come to town with him.

Batiste could win a second, or even a third, Oscar for American Symphony (after getting one for best original score for Disney’s Soul in 2021). It’s likely to be nominated for its song, It Never Went Away, and in the documentary category.

He said: ‘What’s the greatest about this award season, versus the time prior, is that Suleika will be able to be there with me this time and we’ll be together. I can be with her — and last time I couldn’t. And that’s already such a gift and a blessing and it feels full circle.’

 Mark: I’m not a nappy chappy

He’s famous for his devotion to physical fitness, so it’s not surprising that actor Mark Wahlberg was taken aback when he was approached to endorse adult nappies. Wahlberg, 52, said: ‘This is a true story. You know that I’m into wellness and health and, you know, now promoting longevity, and the guy was like: ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing diaper which could work for you to promote.’ And I was like: ‘Yeah, I’m not doing that.’ ‘

The actor stars in a new Apple TV+ film The Family Plan, as a former covert ops soldier who’s retired to the suburbs — until his former boss (Ciaran Hinds) drags him back into that world. It’s streaming now.

Matt sinks his claws into Bond…miaow!

Matthew Vaughn lost out narrowly on the chance to direct the Bond film Casino Royale, and he sends the spy genre up something rotten in his forthcoming film Argylle (out on February 2).

Vaughn remarks: ‘It’s like Roger Moore said about James Bond: what sort of spy walks into a room and everyone knows his name, and what he likes to drink? It’s ridiculous! We’re having fun destroying these tropes.’

In the film, the author Elly Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) creates a faintly ridiculous, chisel-jawed, super-spy (Henry Cavill), who is seen in the story-within-the-story. But as fiction and life start overlapping, Elly gets drawn into the orbit of a real spy — played by Sam Rockwell.

The plot also features a moggy, played by Vaughn’s daughter Cosima’s cat Chip — who took on the role after the hired professional cat had a fallout with the director. Argylle is the first of what Vaughn hopes will be a series. As to what he would have done with Bond, he says we just need to watch his Kingsman films to see…

Florence Pugh believes she has ‘the worst birthday in the world’ — January 3. She told Nick Grimshaw on the Dish podcast: ‘It’s so bad. No one wants to get you anything, because they have no money. No one wants to eat any more food, because you’re really full and fat. No one wants to come out, they want to stay home.

‘Everybody’s started their no drinking, no eating, whatever carb-free thing they want to do, which sucks anyway. And also, people just don’t like that time. I think everybody’s very happy with being invested in being miserable.’