Recap / Poirot S 04 E 02 Death In The Clouds

Death in the Clouds

Original Airdate: 12 January 1992
Written by: William Humble
Directed by: Stephen Whittaker
Recurring cast: Inspector Japp
Based on: Death in the Clouds

Tropes

• Adaptation Name Change: Giselle is the victim's actual last name. In the book, it was a pseudonym, and she was named Marie Morisot. Consequentially, here daughter is Anne Giselle instead of Anne Morisot.
• Adaptational Attractiveness:
  • Venetia Kerr is described as horse-faced in the book, but she is played by the quite good-looking Amanda Royle.
  • Especially prominent with Madame Giselle, who is continuously described as horribly ugly in the book. Her actress Eve Pearce is pretty and youthful-looking.
• Adaptation Deviation: Poirot's motive to clear his name is downplayed to the point of near non-existence, given that Japp is assisting him in the investigation and the plot point about the coroner's jury suspecting him is Adapted Out.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Mr. Clancy knows nothing about stenography, unlike in the book where he almost sees through Jane's "secretary" disguise.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: As it often happens in the series, Poirot mingles with the characters in France rather than only meeting them on the plane.
• Adaptational Heroism: Norman Gale comes across somewhat more sympathetically. He's genuinely in love with Jane Grey and there's no speculation from Poirot that he might have ended up killing her too, and he accepts his fate more gracefully after being unmasked, compared to his book counterpart. There is also no mention of his suspected murder of a Canadian woman.
• Adaptational Job Change: Jane is a flight attendant rather than a hairdresser, and she never gets formally employed by Poirot and never joins the archaeological expedition.
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade: Unlike in the book, Jean Dupont never shows any romantic interest in Jane at all.
• Adaptational Villainy: Anne is Norman's accomplice in Madame Giselle's murder. In the book, she was an innocent Unwitting Pawn throughout his entire scheme and thinks he has nothing to do with the crime, and Poirot believes that one of Norman's many motives for killing her is that she starts to suspect him.
• Adapted Out:
  • Mr. Ryder and Dr. Bryant don't appear.
  • In a weird version of the trope, the storyline involving a blowpipe is removed from Mr. Clancy's book The Clue of the Scarlet Petal, to make his knowledge of blowpipes and his claims to have researched them for a book sound more suspicious.
• Aliens Speaking English: Poirot interviews a French woman entirely in French. However, he conducts the interview in front of an English speaker who knows almost no French, so neither Aliens Speaking English nor Translation Convention would work.
• Character Exaggeration: Mr. Clancy is even more of a Cloud Cuckoolander than his novel counterpart, claiming he talks to and argues with his fictional detective.
• Death by Adaptation: Armand Dupont, a supporting character in the book, died two years ago before the beginning of the episode's plot.
• Demoted to Extra: Inspector Fournier barely appears in the episode but is a more prominent supporting part in the novel.
• Historical Domain Character: The characters attend a tennis championship with Fred Perry and Gottfried von Cramm meeting in the final.
• Just Plane Wrong: The action is set on a DC-3 decorated for the fictional "Empire Airways", rather than an Imperial Airways Handley Page H.P.45. Necessitated by the absence of any surviving models of the latter aircraft. Leads to a minor inaccuracy when a character asks a steward to summon her maid in another compartment; the H.P.45 had two passenger compartments, but the DC-3 did not.