Agatha Christie's ageless Hercule Poirot once again stylishly portrayed by Peter Ustinov makes his television debut in Thirteen for Dinner. The famous Belgian sleuth is a guest on the David Frost Show with a pair of celebrities, Lee Horsley and Faye Dunaway who will shortly figure prominently in his next case.Although Ustinov is flawless as ever, the updating of the story from the time of Stanley Baldwin to the time of Margaret Thatcher makes the plot rather silly. Without giving anything away, let me say that what would have made sense for a motive in 1935 looks kind of ridiculous in 1985 given changing mores.The presence of David Suchet who played Hercule Poirot on the BBC in many adaptations of Agatha Christie as Inspector Japp in this film also gives it some interest. The scenes with Poirot and Suchet are good and Suchet is so good an actor you barely recognize him.Some Christie stories can be successfully updated. But sad to say Thirteen at Dinner is not one of them.

....David Suchet's 2000 version of the same story, "Lord Edgeware Dies", is even better. That makes the score Ustinov-Suchet 1-1, since I preferred Ustinov's version of "Evil Under the Sun". I guess I could use "Death on the Nile" as the tiebreaker, but the 1978 film is one of my long-time favorites, and I don't really feel the need to see another version. Anyway, back to "Thirteen at Dinner". There are 2 main reasons why this is better than "Dead Man's Folly" and "Murder in Three Acts": the comedy is more restrained, and the film is shot on location around London; in fact, it's pretty close in flavor (apart from the updating to the 80's, of course) to the Suchet series - we see Poirot in his apartment, Hastings reading his newspaper, and of course Suchet himself appears as Inspector Japp. However, the story (one of Agatha Christie's most brilliantly simple ones) is not as well-illustrated here as it is in the Suchet version: without going into too many details, I'll only say that in the 2000 film we SEE what happens during the night of Lord Edgeware's murder, so when it is revealed at the end what REALLY happened, it comes as more of a shock. In this film, Japp simply comes to Poirot's apartment in the morning and announces the murder, and we only see the events of the night at the end, narrated by Poirot. Faye Dunaway might be a little better than Helen Grace (who was also very good) as Jane Wilkinson, and the fact that she also plays Carlotta Adams certainly makes the "impersonation" part of the plot more believable, but for someone who is second-billed she doesn't really have THAT much screen time, unlike Grace who almost dominated her picture. As for Jonathan Cecil's Hastings, he is just about acceptable this time. (**1/2)

Peter Ustinov is an absolute joy to behold in the role of Hercule Poirot. He played Poirot in three theatrical films: Death On the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, and Appointment With Death. He also played Poirot in three TV movies: Thirteen At Dinner, Murder in Three Acts, and Dead Man's Folly. It's always a delight to spend time with Ustinov's Poirot. He's so much fun! The three Poirot TV movies starring Ustinov are now available in a three DVD set. I've had a great time watching these with friends and family and all of Ustinov's Poirot movies are worth watching and re-watching. My deep affection for Ustinov's Poirot grows with each viewing. He's brilliant and each of his Poirot movies are fantastic fun.

Nice adaptation of a typical Agatha Christie novel complete with hatfuls of obscure clues, red herrings, guilty secrets, and suspects with enough motives to kill the poor victim a dozen times over. The original novel, by the way, was called 'Lord Edgeware Dies' I'm not sure why the name change was needed. It's not an improvement.The updating to a modern setting worked well up to a point - the opening talk show scene was an amusing addition, but the period setting is for me part of the charm, and the cosy relationship with the police that Poirot enjoys seemed less believable than it would have in it's original time.The trouble with screen adaptations of characters like Poirot is that they are never quite how you imagined them. For me, neither Peter Ustinov as Poirot nor Jonathan Cecil as Hastings were at all right for the part. It is ironic that David Suchet who later established himself as the ultimate Poirot played Inspector Japp.