Original Airdate: 25 December 2009 Written by: Guy Andrews Directed by: Ashley Pearce Recurring cast: n/a Based on:Appointment with Death
Tropes:
Abuse Discretion Shot: In the flashbacks to Lady Boynton ordering the nanny to beat one of her adopted children, Leslie, we only see the cane and the terrified expressions of the other children, and hear Leslie screaming and crying; we also see Lady Boynton listening in remorselessly. The fact we don't see Leslie also helps conceal the plot twist that Leslie was actually a young boy rather than a girl as one of the adult children misremembered; one of the male cast is revealed to be a grown-up Leslie out for revenge against Lady Boynton.
Adaptation Expansion: A subplot concerning human trafficking is added, with Jinny Boynton and the Canon Foreigner Sister Agnieszka taking center stage.
Adaptational Intelligence: Ginevra in the novel is said to be a rather flighty young woman, drawing comparisons to Ophelia from Hamlet. Here, she's a little bit more well-adjusted, even if the parental abuse is still there.
Adaptational Job Change: Mrs. Boynton was a former prison warden in the novel. In the adaptation, she's one of New York's major financiers.
Adaptational Location Change: The setting of the book is changed from Petra in what is now Jordan to Ain Musa in Syria, where Lord Boynton is looking for the skull of John the Baptist.
Dr. Gerard is a downplayed case. While in the books he serves as one of Poirot's assistants, he becomes an accomplice to the murder in the TV series.
Lady Boynton's status as an Abusive Parent is also upgraded from being pointlessly cruel and controlling, to putting her children through physical abuse that borders on Cold-Blooded Torture.
Adapted Out: Nadine Boynton is removed from the adaptation, making her husband Lennox's counterpart in the adaptation single. In addition, Amabel Pierce's presence is removed from the adaptation.
Adults Are Useless: We discover that Lady Leonora Boynton was the one who ordered Nanny Taylor to either beat her stepchildren for their laziness or to submerge them in a bathtub until they were nearing death. Not even Leonora's husband could intervene, which is kinda tragic. The implication is that Lord Boynton was too distracted with his archaeological digs to realise what was going on, at once the truth is revealed at the end he appears to be making efforts to atone.
Adventurer Archaeologist: Lord Boynton is a downplayed example, heading headlong into digs in an attempt to find the skull of John the Baptist. It also causes friction with his son, Leonard.
Ambiguous Situation: It's left unclear whether Sister Agnieszka is a nun who leads a double life as a human trafficker or if she's a human trafficker working in the disguise of a nun. A point towards the former include her praying in her room, while a point towards the latter would be her use of a Protestant translation of the Bible as she discusses it with Jinny.
And I Must Scream: The first step in Lady Boynton's prolonged murder was to inject her with a paralytic drug that would render her helpless and unable to speak as she baked in the Syrian sun. Her death by stabbing would arguably be a mercy to her at that point.
Artistic License – Religion: Zigzagged. Sister Agnieszka recites Luke 14:23 to Jinny while they're at the tomb, but she's reciting from the King James Version, which is a Protestant translation of the Bible. It turns out to be Foreshadowing that she's not all that she seems.
As the Good Book Says...: Sister Agnieszka recites Luke 14:23, which is actually an excerpt from the Parable of the Great Feast (Luke 14:15-24). However, the Bible version she recites is the King James Version, which is the Protestant one and foreshadows that Sister Agnieszka is not a real Catholic nun. Roman Catholics would never recite a Protestant Bible like the KJV one; they would have settled for the Douay–Rheims Bible instead if that is the case.
Jefferson Cope takes his long-delayed revenge on Lady Boynton not by physically injuring her, but by bringing down her financial empire from within and making sure she couldn't do a thing about it.
The murderers in the adaptation take decades to get their revenge on Lady Boynton, but they make it count all throughout.
Better to Die than Be Killed: Theodore Gerard and Lady Celia Westholme choose to commit suicide by digitalis rather than face arrest for their actions.
Break the Cutie: Jinny Boynton goes through the wringer in this adaptation. Living under a domineering and abusive adoptive mother, she gets some reprieve when said mother is murdered. However, she's then targeted by a human trafficker soon afterwards, and while she isn't kidnapped the incident results in the injury of her friend Sister Agnieszka. The worst part comes at the end, however: she watches her biological parents die in front of her just as they have revealed themselves to her. Fortunately, Jinny in the adaptation is made of far stronger stuff than her book counterpart, and she pulls through.
Deliberate Injury Gambit: Dr. Gerard doses himself with a drug that mimics malaria symptoms in order to get an excuse to return to camp and help Lady Celia carry out the murder.
Dies Differently in Adaptation: Lady Boynton is injected with a sedative and then stabbed to death, as opposed to just being injected with poison. The murderer is also injected with poison in the end, instead of shooting themself.
Do Not Call Me "Paul": Jefferson Cope prefers to go by his second name, rather than his first name, Leslie, due to its status as an ambiguously gendered name. This revealed as a key point late in the story.
Dramatic Irony: At one point, Jinny Boynton aids and comforts a seemingly ill Dr. Gerard, unaware that he's her biological father.
Driven to Suicide: Nanny Taylor drowns herself in her bathtub, due to a combination of guilt from her actions while working under Lady Boynton and having said guilt magnified by Dr. Gerard while she's under the influence of mescaline.
Gender-Blender Name: Poirot learns about one of the failed Boynton children from Carol Boynton, a child named Leslie. Poirot assumes Leslie to be a girl, but they turn out to be a boy instead — and one who has his own plans for revenge against Lady Boynton.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Lady Boynton's murder is pretty much committed in broad daylight. The first part, injecting the paralytic, is disguised as a hornet sting, while the Coup de Grâce is done by the murderer approaching Lady Boynton with their weapon concealed in hand, and stabs her without anyone the wiser.
Hit Them in the Pocketbook: Jefferson Cope gets revenge on his abusive foster mother, Lady Boynton, by compromising her company's stocks and depriving her of access to newspapers so that she wouldn't learn about it until it's too late. Lady Boynton is murdered, however, before the ramifications of Cope's plot become apparent.
Hope Springs Eternal: Poirot finishes up his retelling of the tale of Pandora's Box to Raymond at the end of the book, pointing out that the last thing to exit the box was indeed hope. He implicitly gives Raymond and Dr. Sarah King his blessing towards their relationship in this manner.
Karmic Death: The fate of Sister Agnieszka in the desert in Appointment with Death.
Luke, I Am Your Father: The climax reveals that Dr. Theodore Gerard and Dame Celia Westholme are Jinny Boynton's biological parents.
Murder-Suicide: Happens when both Dr. Gerard and Dame Celia Westholme are denounced as both murderers and Jinny Boynton's real parents. Once they are found out, Dr. Gerard kills Dame Celia and then himself with a fatal dose of digitoxin.
Lady Boynton's name before marrying Lord Boynton was Leonora Pierce, in a likely allusion to Amabel Pierce from the novel who was otherwise Adapted Out.
The conclusion is reminiscent of Death on the Nile and its 1978 film adaptation. The culprits are a pair of lovers; after being exposed by Poirot, they kiss passionately while one delivers a Mercy Kill to the other with a hidden weapon. At this point Poirot realises something is wrong and stands up, but the surviving culprit warns him back, brandishes the weapon, and commits suicide, so that the two of them can escape justice and be Together in Death, with the scene being played very tragically.
No Animals Were Harmed: A disclaimer in the end credits of Appointment with Death says, "No animals were harmed in the making of this film." This is because blood taken from a dead goat was instrumental in the murder of Lady Boynton, and a dead goat is shown as part of the evidence.
Nobility Marries Money: Lord Boynton, a British peer, marries Leonora Pierce, an American financier. It's stated that Lady Boynton funds Lord Boynton's archaeological expeditions and that Leonard Boynton struggles to run the Boynton properties without the financial backing of his stepmother.
One-Woman Wail: Plays as Lady Boynton is presumably found dead and everyone looks on.
Public Domain Soundtrack: The sad music that plays in the scene when Dame Celia Westholme approaches the helpless Lady Boynton to perform the Coup de Grâce on her is "Dido's Lament (When I Am Laid in Earth)" from the 1689 opera Dido and Aeneas by English composer Henry Purcell. (Some parts of it are also repeated in one scene before the murder, and in another scene when the record skips because of the dust in it.)
Jefferson Cope is made one of the failed Boynton children in the adaptation, mentioned by Carol as one of those introduced as a new sibling who would then mysteriously disappear.
Lady Celia Westholme and Dr. Theodore Gerard had no connection to each other before the events of the novel. Here, they're lovers who had a child together.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Sister Agnieszka escapes during the Summation Gathering as everyone is distracted by the culprits committing a Murder-Suicide. She manages to commandeer a truck and drive out into the desert, but her truck breaks down and she eventually dies of exposure in the desert.
Poirot discusses the tale of Pandora's Box with Raymond Boynton.
Poirot and Lord Boynton discuss an ancient Mesopotamian tale about a man meeting death in Samarra, as retold by W. Somerset Maugham.
Together in Death: Dr. Gerard and Lady Celia choose to die together via digitalis injection in order to prevent the law from punishing them for their deed.
Two Dun It: In the adaptation the murder of Lady Boynton is carried out by Lady Celia Westholme, in tandem with her lover Dr. Theodore Gerard.
When You Coming Home, Dad?: Downplayed. While Leonard Boynton does occasionally accompany his father to his archaeological digs, he still resorts to tragic measures to make Lord Boynton quit digging and start attending to his domestic duties by faking a discovery of the skull of John the Baptist.
Wicked Stepmother: Lady Boynton is this from Leonard Boynton's POV, as her love for his father doesn't quite extend to his son.
Who Murdered the Asshole: Like in the book, with the distinction being that nearly everyone has a motive to kill off Lady Boynton. The only ones who don't are Poirot himself and the mysterious Polish nun who joined their party.
You Can't Fight Fate: Poirot and Lord Boynton discuss this when they talk about the story of the "appointment at Samarra", whose lesson is that death comes for us all.
