Simply the best adaptation of any of Agatha Christie's novels.The best novel is in my opinion "Ten Little N*****s" aka "Ten Little Indians" aka "And then there were none". Unfortunately, it has never been successfully adapted to the screen. The most celebrated version, and I refuse to understand why, is René Claire's of 1945, which is completely out of the realms of the original atmosphere, though superficially partly true to the plot."Five Little Pigs" - another novel with a numeral in the title - is not one of Christie's best. A rather amusing trifle, that's all. This adaptation manage, not only to stick to the original story, but to amplify it. I think that what the director did to a great effect, was to shoot the historical sequences in an individual fashion, compared to the rest of the picture. The light becomes yellowish, the zooming is almost as if in a news transmission. On top of this the haunting musical score, mostly Satie, and you have a delicious meal out of yesterday's left overs. Or am I bit harsh on the original novel? What differs slightly from the novel is the depiction of the murderer, whom, I seem to recall, was not threatened by persecution. Elsa Greer was, perhaps, a bit unrelentingly depicted in the picture. The addition of the gay themed relation between the first victim and his childhood friend, is quite moving, and as expected not even inferred to in the novel. "Five Little Pigs" is a very erotic adaptation of a Christie, one might add.Good acting. Especially in comparison with the accomplishments of the cast of "Murder in Mesopotamia"...

I watched this episode as I was reading the book for the umpteenth time. In many ways it is remarkably faithful to the book, at times taking scenes and dialogue straight from the pages. It's times like this, when an adaptation is so faithful, that it makes any variance seem either unnecessary or puzzling. For instance, in the book "Lucy" is named Carla, Caroline Crale dies in prison but is not executed, Elsa is 20 instead of 18, the events happened 16 years ago instead of 14, and Philip Blake was in love with Caroline, not Amyas, when he was young and hated her because she did not return his love. There is also an extra scene at the end where Lucy confronts the real killer with a gun but, as another reader pointed out, this is more of a tense psychological moment that works here but would have seemed over-dramatic in the book. All the characters were very much how I pictured them, and David Suchet was wonderful as usual. All in all, a very enjoyable episode with some puzzling variations.

the novel name is driven from a nursery rhyme i read the book first year in colleague & i have to admit it's very enjoyable to watch specially when the script writers respected the original novel , one of my favorite poirots movies of all timeFIVE LITTLE PIGSis a story being repeated 5 times ( in many flashbacks) by the 5 people who were there 14 yrs ago on an island where a famous painter was poisoned , his wife trailed & executed latereveryone always thought his wife was guilty ,at the present time Lucy Crale (daughter of amyas the painter & his wife)asks poirot to help her discover the truth behind the mystery as she's very sure of her mother's innocence ( caroline ) poirot listens to the 5 witness Philip Blake (amyas's friend) , Meredith Blake (Philip Blake's brother)Elsa Greer (amyas's model & mistress but now she's become Lady Dittisham),Miss Williams (the governess), Angela (Caroline's younger sister) stories about the day of the murderfrom interigating miss William's the governess she confessed seeing caroline removing fingerprints off the bottle of beer that amyas was drinking from last & telling miss William's that amyas committed suicided but if he did ,why did she remove the finger prints when everyone saw her bringing the bottle to him & that she didn't tell the police back then about this coz she thought this would incriminate caroline more this is the key to the mystery coz caroline removed the fingerprints to whom she thought it belonged to the murderer but there is a the suspense & the surprise waiting at the end of the moving the Director Paul Unwin used yellowish screen to help viewers to separate between the flash backs & the present the director was not routine at all & handled the story in a very moral way without directing our minds into thinking the same way he didi have to mention the beautiful locations in which it was used , the sea was a beautiful back ground to a flashback scene with caroline in it .. the garden .. the beautiful terrace in the house of the painter .. the place near the river where amyas paints , even the rays of sun in the flashbacks down on the scenes were so appealing (strong photography )as for the actors Lucy the daughter i didn't think she was good as she should no spark in her eyes , amyas as womanizer painter he was perfect for the role , the best performance goes to the acting of Rachael Stirling (caroline) she's very remarkable in that role very strong & yet calm till the end ,Julie Cox ( Elsa) was good & vague a bit but very effective , the one who surprised me was Sophie Winkleman ( angela) she's very talented to the bones & i saw her in a previous miss marple episode called ( the moving finger)where she appeared prettier &had a bigger role but here she is stronger although with a less space on screen i cant forget to mention the theme music at the beginning and the ending very charming & enchanting puts you in the right mood in those old times i love that era back in time you'll enjoy the movie i m quite sure , it's a story about love ,a woman who love her husband to death & he loves her back to death too very charming drawing .. enjoyyy

This is one of Dame Agatha's more engaging conundrums, though not exactly the kind of acute examination of "the psychology" that Hercule Poirot (David Suchet) claims it is.Let's see. There is one of those perfervid painter-types, Amyas Crale, a Byronic figure, married to a good-enough wife but having one affair after another. He drinks a glass of beer and drops dead, poisoned in the proper British manner. The deed seems to have been prompted by Crayle's announcement that this time his love affair with his model (Julie Cox) was serious and he intended to shrug off his marriage and replace his wife with his model. The wife is convicted and, without any protest from her, hanged. That was fourteen years ago. Now, the daughter is convinced of her mother's innocence and hires Poirot to investigate.So who did it? Well, there were only about half a dozen people present at the isolated rural mansion at the time of the murder. Was it Crayle's best friend from boyhood (Toby Stephens)? Maybe it was Meredith, another boyhood friend who is always skulking around and who, after all, had a collection of chemicals in the basement, the poison among them. Or maybe it was Crayle's own daughter, blinded in one eye by her mother years ago, killing her father in order to frame her mother who is the obvious suspect. Might it not have been Julie Cox, the model he was apparently about to marry? But, no. What motive would she have for killing her lover? Could Crayle's wife actually be GUILTY? Or was there some stranger out of the past who sneaked in and did the dirty deed? Well -- not that. Because all of Agatha Christie's plots involve only the suspects who are around at the time of the murder.Now, I'll tell you who did it. (Not really.) I enjoyed this more than most of the movie-length episodes in the series for a couple of reasons. One is that there was no subordinate or embedded crime, irrelevant to the murder itself, that might have thrown the plot off kilter. None of the suspects is a closet jewel thief or anything. It's a nice clean mystery. Second, I could tell the characters apart. As always, they're introduced with a name and a phrase and we're given a two-second shot of the suspect's face. But this time there seemed to be fewer suspects, and they LOOKED different from one another. Toby Stephens I already recognized from "The Great Gatsby" TV production, which should have been called "The Great Blunder." The others had some visible distinguishing characteristic -- the beard; the disfigured face; the great enormous stupendous colossal raccoon-like exopthalmic eyeballs of Julie Cox, the model, who looks as if she could eat a normal human being alive by nibbling him to death with her pupils. I haven't read the novel but I imagine some modernization has gone on. The artist and Toby Stephens, as it turns out, were more than just friends during their boyhood.David Suchet IS Poirot, giving a shaded performance much different from his splashier big-screen counterparts.I admired, too, the tale for having a moral behind it. Van Gogh, Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec, Jackson Pollack, and the rest notwithstanding -- one should never drink while trying to paint. Not unless you want your model to turn up with three breasts.