The first one, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," starts off with Poirot apparently retired and attempting to live a quiet life. Well, this story is actually told by Poirot reading a journal written by the murderer in the mystery. It seems this particular criminal noted everything that was happening while it was happening, even to the point of making fun of the cops and Poirot as they are mislead by the real criminal's red herrings.
While Poirot tries to stay out of the mystery and keep to his retirement, he finds he can't and is once again thrust into determining just which of the people in the little village he moved into has committed the murders.
"Lord Edgware Dies" has Poirot officially coming out of retirement, and low and behold, it seems that Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser) is making his way back to London. He is still married, but when an investment goes south, he and his wife start moving back to London.
As for the mystery itself, Poirot is asked to attend a comedy show and afterwards, the star of the show asks him to talk to her husband and try to convince him to let her get a divorce. When he goes to talk to the husband, he learns that he actually said yes months ago in a letter left for her, but she never replied.
When Poirot tells the actress this, she decides to celebrate by going to a dinner party that she had planned to skip. This seems like good fortune since her husband is killed while she is at the party, and someone seems to be trying to frame her. After all, several people saw her go to the house and go visit her husband just before his death. Now Poirot must try to unravel the mysteries and figure out who actually committed the murder.
Continuing the theme of Poirot having a mystery everywhere he goes is the episode "Murder in Mesopotamia." Poirot heads to Iraq to not only visit Hastings, who is in town visiting his nephew, but because an old flame of his has sent a letter to Poirot asking him to show up because she needs to talk to him.
Unfortunately, when he gets there, he is left a message that she has left for a couple of days and asks Poirot to wait. Meanwhile, a murder at the dig site becomes the focus of Poirot's attention. One of the people at the dig seems to get regular threats over the mail, each one warning her to stay away from new relationships, but when she got married with no letter, she felt like she was finally out of the shadow. Her husband died several years back in the United States, but the letters seem to come from him and claim to be coming back to her. In an odd twist though, it seems like the letters are written by the lady's own hand, or at least her handwriting. When she turns up as the episode's second victim, the identity of the letter writer becomes even more important.
"Evil Under the Sun" is a favorite among Poirot fans. There was a theatrical version released in 1982 featuring Peter Ustinov and there was even a PC adventure game a few years back, and given this series' desire to work its way through each Poirot mystery, it had to come to this classic tale eventually. It was a pleasure to see Suchet go through the familiar story. For those not familiar with this particular tale, Poirot is forced to go on vacation, but like the other episodes in this collection, mysteries seem to follow him.
While on a resort island, one of the resort guests, a rich woman, is found dead on one of the island's hidden coves. While investigating the area, Poirot, Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson) discover a cave of drugs and that as a potential motive can't be ignored. Of course, the truth is much more complicated and devious.
As always, Agatha Christie's Poirot is a great collection of mysteries performed by actors who know their roles. It's a little odd to have two seasons covered in one DVD set, but given low number of episodes in each season, it is completely understandable. It would feel worse to have a DVD release that has only two feature-length episodes.
