The ABC Murders
- Original Airdate: 5 January 1992
Written by: Clive Exton
Directed by: Andrew Grieve
Recurring cast: Captain Hastings, Inspector Japp
Based on: The ABC Murders
Tropes
- Adapted Out: Many of the Scotland Yard officers who get involved in the ABC case, particularly Crome (who, in the books, was the person-in-charge of the investigation), were removed and their roles given to Chief Inspector Japp (whose only role in the book was to commission the case to his, so to speak, "subordinates").
- Adaptational Timespan Change: In the novel the murders take place over several months, while in the episode the three titular murders occur over a span of ten days.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: One of the Spinning Papers following the case has this gem:BEXHILL BRUTALITY BAFFLES BELGIAN
- Brick Joke: Hastings keeps on trying to tell the story of how he shot the crocodile he had stuffed and brought back to Poirot as a gift, to no avail. At the end of the episode, he finally gets to tell the story to Cust, while Poirot and Japp leave him and his hapless (albeit fascinated) audience alone.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Captain Hastings has a terribly hard time getting anyone to listen to his story about shooting a cayman in Venezuela.
- Running Gag: Hastings arrives in London bringing a preserved crocodile corpse, whom he named "Cedric". He's really proud of his kill, and tries to tell his story of the hunt to whoever is around, but is always interrupted before he can even start. In the last scene, though, he finally got an interested listener in the form of Cust, and Poirot and Japp could quietly slipped away while the two chatted about the crocodile. Especially, the other characters come to dread Hastings's use of the words "I shot him on the Orinoko, a few miles upstream from La Urbana..."
- Shout-Out: Cust is at the cinema twice, once attending the screening of Black Limelight, a.k.a. Footsteps in the Sand
(1939, which is kinda odd, given that it was an adaptation of the play that wasn't shown on film in three years, since Poirot's timeline is set in August-September 1936), and then attending the screening of Alfred Hitchcock's Number Seventeen (1932), which is the latter that is shown when the fourth murder committed by Franklin Clarke takes place. - Unwitting Pawn: Alexander Bonaparte Cust suffers from blackouts and memory loss. The killer, who Cust thinks is his friend, ensures he is at the scene of each murder so he'll be framed for them, and even plants the idea in Cust's mind that he committed the murders during his lapses in memory.
