The ABC Murders

The '30s period details are lavishly spot-on and Malkovich, with his graying goatee and thick-as-bearnaise accent, gives the character a haunted, beady-eyed intensity. It may be a bit leisurely paced for some, but armchair whodunit junkies will enjoy this workout for their "little gray Cells." [1/8 Feb 2019, p.85]

An elaborately fleshed-out Poirot history is the most audacious aspect of this “ABC Murders,” which, as the original dictates, abounds in red herrings and overly broad supporting characters. ... No one will ever call Mr. Malkovich a minimalist, but he does strip away the customary flamboyance, thus making Poirot new.

Why does this murky version of Christie’s 1936 novel occasionally hit wearisome and plodding stretches? It’s never because of Malkovich’s portrayal. It’s the directing and writing that comes up short. ... Despite the erratic nature of the direction, “The ABC Murders” often is gripping fare, with each installment serving up more than its share of fiercely memorable moments.

Malkovich’s detective lacks his spirit. ... This detective is subdued, almost meek. He is an imposter.

The ABC Murders is Phelps’s most thorough teardown yet, and this time she’s so suffocatingly revisionist that what’s left isn’t really Christie at all. The insistence on making everything grimmer and grosser is almost comically complete. ... Phelps is so focused on her combination of chic malaise and sensationalism that she doesn’t give the actors anything human to play, or anything witty to play with.

Phelps struggles to thematically relate the fascism that envelopes the show’s setting to the story’s events as they unfold, or even to Poirot’s modus operandi as a detective. The detective remains a cipher, humorlessly bearing the weight of a tragic origin story and a nation’s decay on his shoulders. In the end, The ABC Murders suffocates the enthralling, exciting qualities of a detective mystery beneath a layer of self-regarding grimness.

While everyone else is hamming it up playing monstrous psychopaths on an operatic scale, Malkovich wafts glumly from scene to scene, his facial expressions rarely more animated than someone trying to do long division in his head. ... It’s difficult to imagine what Phelps is trying to achieve by making her series so viscerally icky, and so intent on stirring things--and people--up.