Recap / Poirot S 12 E 04 The Clocks

The Clocks

Original airdate: 26 December 2011
Written by: Stewart Harcourt
Directed by: Charles Palmer
Recurring cast: n/a
Based on: The Clocks

Tropes:

• Adaptation Deviation:
  • Poirot shows the inverted clue to Colin before the conclusion of the case, rather than after it.
  • Shiela Webb was raised by an elderly couple rather than her aunt in the adaptation.
  • Since Miss Pebmarsh is not Shiela Webb's mother in the adaptation, Colin has no reason to be as sympathetic to her and simply places her under arrest, rather than giving her a chance at a head start to evade the police.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Colin is an emotional wreck because his lover died while fighting off an MI6 mole, and he blamed himself for her death because he hadn't paid attention to her earlier call of help.
  • Sheila does not have an aunt in this continuity. She's an orphan who had lost both her parents and her adoptive parents, and, in her loneliness, became involved in a love affair with one of her clients. Her "disgraceful" behaviour is the reason why Miss Martindale decided to frame her for the crime. Also, while both versions of the story saw her as the primary suspect of the murder, she was never arrested in the book.
  • Miss Pebmarsh lost two sons (which she does not have in the original novel) during the first World War, and this was the reason why she became a spy/traitor. She believed that, if Hitler takes over England before Churchill, the second War would be avoided. She is not Sheila's mother.
  • The Waterhouses, originally a pair of wacky siblings, are turned into Jewish refugees who came to England to escape the Nazi regime, but were still forced to hide their identities due to the anti-Semitic discrimination they faced in the new country.
• Adaptational Dumbass: In the books, Colin is regarded as a competent agent, despite his temperament being unsuitable for his line of work, which caused him to eventually resign from MI5 at the end of the story. He questions the suspects, comes up some intelligent deductions and he eventually manages to complete his Special Branch assignment on his own. All of these accomplishments were stripped away from him in the adaptation, and were given to Poirot to give the great detective a greater involvement in the story. There is some justification, in that the adaptation also gives him a backstory involving a murdered lover for which he blames himself, thus explaining a more emotional and less effective involvement in events.
• Adaptational Job Change: The Waterhouses are a pair of academics who work from home in the adaptation, instead of a managing clerk at a solicitors' firm and her brother's keeper.
• Adaptational Name Change:
  • Due to his background being changed, Colin Lamb is now Colin Race.
  • Edna Brent is now named Nora Brent.
  • The Waterhouse siblings were named James and Edith in the novel. In the adaptation, they're named Matthew and Rachel, hinting to their Jewish background.
• Adaptational Location Change: Instead of the events taking place at Crowdean in Sussex, they now take place at Dover in Kent.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In the novel, Colin Lamb is implied to be Superintendent Battle's son. In the adaptation, since Superintendent Battle was Adapted Out in the adaptation of Cards on the Table and replaced by Superintendent Wheeler, who is revealed to be gay, Colin Lamb is now named Colin Race and therefore becomes Colonel Race's son.
• Already Done for You: One of the members of the spy ring was about to shoot Fiona Harbury for uncovering them when a car suddenly appears and takes her out, meaning he doesn't need to use his gun.
• Ascended Extra: In the novel Poirot only appears for a handful of scenes and solves the case as the facts are given to him. Here he takes a more active role in the investigation.
• Brief Accent Imitation: After Poirot tells Inspector Hardcastle, "I do not think it is important who he is, but who he is," before leaving, Hardcastle repeats the phrase in his Poirot accent, as if he hasn't had a clue.
• Central Theme: The adaptation's theme centers on how not paying attention leads to fatal outcomes. On two occasions, a character gets rebuffed after they reveal they have important information and end up getting killed in the process. The case takes longer to solve because the inspector in charge focuses too hard on certain details in the case and ends up missing some important information. A moment of inattention gets a key witness killed. By contrast, Poirot solves the case by paying attention to several details, even through seemingly irrelevant questions that annoy his fellow investigators.
• Death by Adaptation: Annabel Larkin gets run over by the same car that killed Fiona Harbury in the adaptation. In the novel the spy Larkin's fate was left ambiguous.
• Dying Clue: Before Fiona Harbury is killed, she manages to write a crescent moon followed by "M 61", which, when turned upside down, reads "19 W [crescent]" for 19 Wilbraham Crescent, where the blind spy Millicent Pebmarsh lives.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: Shots of the White Cliffs of Dover are used to establish the adaptation as being set in Dover.
• Exact Words: At the inquest Nora Brent has an epiphany and tries to get Inspector Hardcastle's attention, mentioning that "What she said couldn't possibly be true... She was lying at the inquest, you see." Apart from Hardcastle and his team being dismissive of her (which gets poor Nora killed), it can also be assumed that she's referring to Shiela possibly lying at the inquest. It turns out that Shiela wasn't lying — but Miss Martindale, Shiela and Nora's boss, was.
• Failed a Spot Check: Hardcastle and a constable keep watch on Merlina Rival as she goes to whoever the culprit would be, and in their overconfidence share a laugh together. Unfortunately this results in them losing Merlina, rushing to find her as they hear a scream, and all they find is her dead body and the culprit nowhere to be found.
• Flashback Effects: Whenever someone tells a story about what happened in the past, a scene cuts to the clocks rewinding until we get to the flashback.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: There are church bells tolling ominously in one flashback scene early on.
• Foregone Conclusion: Since the adaptation takes place a few years prior to World War II, the spies' attempt at preventing war between the UK and Nazi Germany is ultimately doomed to fail.
• Gender Flip:
  • In the novel Harbury was a male agent who died prior to the events of the story and made the enigmatic clue. In the adaptation, his counterpart is a woman named Fiona Harbury who also serves as Colin Race's first love interest.
  • Similarly, Larkin was also a male spy in the original, and is changed to a woman named Annabel Larkin.
  • The Ramsays had two sons named Bill and Ted in the novel. In the adaptation, their counterpart Mr Mabbutt has two daughters named Jenny and May.
• Historical In-Joke: One of Mr Mabbutt's worries is that Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement will fail and someone more belligerent like Winston Churchill will take over the United Kingdom. Of course, that's exactly what happened a few years later, historically speaking.
• Humans Are Flawed: Discussed. Colin protests on behalf of Shiela's innocence, since he sees her as a good person and is therefore unlikely to be the murderer. Poirot rebuts him, saying such:
  Poirot: The world is full of good people who do bad things, mon ami.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Colin Race's primary motivation in the case is the fact that his lover, Fiona Hanbury, died after she took off to apprehend a spy she had found and was subsequently hit by a car, all while he ignored her due to focusing on his card game.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Since Colin isn't Inspector Hardcastle's friend in the adaptation, their rivaling jurisdictions make it more challenging for them to work together. Hardcastle also doesn't think much of Poirot's methods, preferring his own instead.
• Look Both Ways: In the prologue, Fiona Hanbury tries to stop Annabel Larkin for espionage, but both end up getting run over by a car. She does leave behind a Dying Clue, which proves to be useful later.
• The Mole: The story revolves around Poirot trying to determine which of the weirdo denizens of Wilbraham Crescent is, in actuality, a Nazi spy.
• Named In The Adaptation: Inverted. The murder victim is left unnamed in the adaptation, with Poirot choosing instead to focus on who he is (i.e., what his role in the case is) rather than who he is (i.e., his name and identity).
• Not Now, Kiddo:
  • Colin is dismissive of Fiona's claim that she found a spy within Dover Castle, being more interested in his card game instead. This ends up getting Fiona killed and giving Colin a bit of a complex.
  • Hardcastle keeps brushing off Nora after she spots the thread at the inquest. This does not end well for Nora.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: In contrast to Miss Pebmarsh having a well-meaning, if warped reasoning for spying on behalf of the Nazis, Mr Mabbutt is less sympathetic, openly siding with the Nazis because he believes them to be Europe's last stand against the Communist Soviets, as well as assuming that Britain would lose in a then-hypothetical war with Germany and that he'd be treated well for betraying his country should that happen.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: In the original story Poirot's role was rather passive and was limited to solving the case without doing any investigating himself. Since his character is front-and-center in the adaptation, he's therefore given a bigger role instead.
• Setting Update: The setting is changed from the 1960s, during which the The Cold War takes place, to the 1930s, and so the Greater-Scope Villain is changed from the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany.
• Shipper on Deck: After Shiela's innocence is cleared, Poirot prods Colin to pursue her, now that nothing stands in the way of their romance.
• Show Within a Show: Poirot meets Colin Race at a performance of Ariadne Oliver's play The Good Samaritan, starring her Finnish detective Sven Hjerson.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Miss Pebmarsh is not Shiela Webb's estranged mother in this story. Colin is also clearly established as the son of Colonel Race, whereas in the novel, his father is implied to be Superintendent Battle.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: One of the suspects, a blind geriatric named Miss Pebmarsh, lived through World War I and was rightly traumatized by the young lives lost in the war. She conspires with the Nazis under a misguided belief that committing treason is preferable to a second war with Germany. Note that in the book, the story happened after WWII, during the Cold War instead.