The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

 Agatha Christie's Poirot

Series 1

"The Adventure of the Clapham Cook"

David Suchet as Hercule Poirot

When I read David Suchet's book Poirot and Me, I learned a lot about each episode of the TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot. Once I finished, I felt the need to watch the entire series all over again and look for all the things I had learned about. With thirteen seasons and I don't know how many episodes, this is going to be a long journey, but I'm going to give it a try. Hopefully the theme song will not drive me too crazy before I finish.

The very first episode

"The Adventure of the Clapham Cook" is the first episode in the series. In it, a woman seeks detective Hercule Poirot's help in finding her missing cook. Poirot believes he is far above a case like this. In fact, he feels he is pretty much above every case, as there were quite a few before this one that his friend Captain Hastings presented to him.

The woman rightfully tells Poirot off about his superior attitude. Chagrined, Poirot agrees to take the case. Little does he know, the case will lead to something more serious, such as a bank robbery and murder.

A cook is a person too

What disgusted me about this episode was how everyone after a while dismissed the importance of the cook being missing. Even the woman who came to Poirot began to disregard the cook's disappearance once her husband told her to. Poirot, the police, everyone except maybe Hastings acted as though it was no big deal the cook was missing. It was as though they all saw her as less of a person because she was a cook, and that because of her position it was not a big deal for her to be missing.

To make the situation worse, Poirot finds out the cook was conned about a legacy (what others would call an inheritance). With this he pretty much shrugs, even though when the cook finds this out it is going to affect her greatly. That poor woman has bad news coming to her and no one seems to care.

A little power can go to the head

Another aggravating part of this episode was the porter at the train station. When Poirot and Hastings went to ask about a trunk, the porter became a perfect example of how people with a little power can turn into very ugly human beings. The porter withheld information because he could and treated Hastings poorly for very little reason. Poirot allowed and encouraged this behavior without batting an eye. He even made Hastings out to be the one in the wrong in the situation. I don't care if doing this helped Poirot get the information he wanted. It was wrong.

Now that I think about it, maybe all these irritations are why I had to watch this episode three times before I understood what was going on.

Main Cast

Hercule Poirot - David Suchet     Captain Hastings - Hugh Fraser

Chief Inspector Japp - Philip Jackson     Miss Lemon - Pauline Moran