Jacques COULARDEAU (Author), 

Annunzio COULARDEAU (Illustrator)

The score is full of notes, filled with notes, notes and bars that have no shape at first, except going up and down, at times clustered in bunches here and there. The composer looks at his score, perfectly and neatly printed in world-class toner on the paper. And he has the sudden envy – and he has that sudden envy every single time he comes to the end of a composition – to be able to take it and shake it and rearrange it all haphazardly, maybe one day even empty it into the kitchen drain or flush all those notes down the toilet in the bathroom. Good riddance.

To Ivan Eve,

at a time when the sky was all smiles

From his Lord Wotton

at a time when he fell for Dorian Gray

the toy of the Lord Shiva of all Perdition

preparing for the shiva’h of his youth

lost in the seven veils of his maturity

Product Details :

File Size: 675 KB –

Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited –

Publisher: Editions La Dondaine; 1st edition (May 15, 2010) –

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc. –

Language: English –

ASIN: B0099LG6UY –

Text-to-Speech: Enabled  -

Amazon Digital Services, Inc., September 12, 2012

$5.27 includes VAT & free international wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet on Amazon.com;

€ 4,11 TTC & envoi gratuit via réseau sans fil par Amazon Whispernet on Amazon.fr.

THE RIOT CLUB – 2014

The film is glamorous because it is taking place at Oxford University, among the aristocracy attending there, business, political and real nobility all mixed in one culture, with some representatives of some foreign top society, in this case the one foreign student seems to be Greek. But that is not the point. Just for that very reason we could expect some nobility and some common sense. But these young men, just under or above twenty years of age, are rich and they show it, spoilt and they stink like it in every single gesture of theirs, rotten but not at all like the famous Johnny Rotten who was against the establishment with all his guns, sexual or not. Here they are rotten because they turn their belonging to the top establishment into the most disgusting condescending rejection of all the others accused of being “the poor.”

In other words these young men are plainly filthy. These four qualifying adjectives are the “subtitle” of the DVD but they are just right.

Let’s say this film is the most disgusting aristocratic remake of the famous film Clockwork Orange, but without having the excuse of being rejected, socially discriminated against, uneducated and bored to death by total inactivity, no jobs, no parents, no nothing anyone is supposed to have, including doctors if necessary. The only thing the older Clockwork Orange young men had was the police and prison. But in this film these young aristocratic people have absolutely everything they can dream of and they make it a weapon against hard working people and ordinary citizens because they want to have fun, and for them fun is over-drink, over-eat, insult people, make as much noise as possible, disturb everyone, destroy everything they can, etc. And do not forget their sexism because for them the game is not funny if there is not an escort girl to satisfy all their needs, of course under the belt in this case, for a few hundred pounds.

But what makes this film particularly bizarre and hateful is that one culprit will pay for the ten culprits they are, one picked by the police on the presence of some DNA on the weapon used to nearly kill the publican whose pub was trashed by them. The moral lesson from the parents is that they have a good lawyer at their disposal and that everyone can make a mistake and they, the young people, are at college in order to learn how to adapt to any situation, including that basically criminal behavior and action. They, parents and children, are sexists, they are extreme segregationists against the poor, they are disrespectful of anything, sacred or not. And among these ten people one will be Prime Minister one day and all of them will be MPs or Lords (since some are from hereditary noble families carrying the position of Lord) or ministers, with maybe one or two who will prefer hiding away at Oxford university as dons overlooking the next generation of noble hooligans.

The picture is absolutely sickening and unbearable. If you can survive watching such young people full of trash trashing the society that is providing them with more money they need and can use, you may then understand why we have to get rid of the House of Lords and of these universities who excuse nine culprits because their parents can provide a lot of money. Here the rot is not in the sons of this aristocracy but in the university institution and the social establishment that are behind. This society needs some good cleansing. Where is Hercules, by Jove?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

La Parole de Saint Chrosome [Explicit]

Jacques Coulardeau

Amazon.com / Amazon.fr

Product Details / Détails sur le produit

Total Length / Durée totale: 44:48

Genres: Miscellaneous / Divers

Format: Explicit Lyrics / paroles explicites

ASIN: B006DHBBWA / B006DDFRXI

$6.99 / €8,39

BERTRAND BONELLO – SAINT LAURENT – 2014

Il s’agit là d’un film adulé. Il serait intéressant alors de se demander pourquoi il est autant adulé alors que son concurrent, « Yves Saint Laurent », est passé sans véritablement faire de vagues. La différence anecdotique est que Pierre Berger était pour l’autre et contre celui-ci. Mais rien n’est simple en ce bas monde, alors on peut se poser bien des questions. Serait-ce une sporte de réponse de la bergère ?

Je vais simplement me demander ce qui donne à ce film un attrait si irrésistible que certains ont qualifié d’hypnotique.

D’abord il fait l’impasse sur le peu utile épisode de l’Algérie et se concentre sur l’adulte en France qui va bouleverser le monde d’une vision endiablée et enflammée de la chair qu’il faut bien habiller au risque de laisser la nudité envahir nos rues et nos salons. Il est un enfant du baby boom et le film le place résolument dans cette dynamique qui commence aux alentours de 1956. Le film sait manier tous les médias et tous les arts qui ont bouleversé l’âme de ce monde de l’après monstruosité, ce qui n’implique en rien qu’il n’y a pas eu et qu’il  n’y aura plus de monstruosités dans ce monde.

Yves Saint Laurent apparaît alors comme un enfant pourri que le monde de la France franco franchouillarde aurait bien pu éliminer par puritanisme républicain et laïque sur la simple question de sa non conformité sexuelle et de sa non-conformité addictive, quelque part dans un hôpital militaire. Il cherchait dans la vie tout ce qui pouvait la faire dérailler de la normalité. Bref il était le diable et une république laïque ne peut pas tolérer le diable car celui-ci implique quelque part un dieu ou des dieux. Alors on déclare ce diable fou, caractériel, psychotique, voire même schizophrénique, schizo comme disent les gens branchés de la classe moyenne intégrée.

Le film alors puise dans la musique de ce temps-là et dans les informations prioritairement télévisées et cinématographiques de l’époque. De Gaulle traverse la coulisse et la scène en grand inspirateur qui n’a laissé de souvenir que son nom. En fait de Gaulle comme Yves Saint Laurent étaient des iconoclastes de l’ordre établi pour trouver un ordre nouveau qui soit généreux et humain. Et je pèse mes mots. L’ont-ils trouvé ? En ces temps de Pays Bas triomphants dans le doute érigé en morale obligatoire pourvue qu’elle soit absolument non-religieuse, nous voulons dire non-chrétienne et non-juive mais bien évidemment anti-la-troisième-religion-à-base-hébraïque, nous pouvons en douter. Et Yves Saint Laurent rêve d’un Mohamed et d’un Ali derrière la Gare du Nord dans les gravats d’un chantier en remplacement du Jacques que Pierre Berger lui interdit.

Le film ensuite produit un tourbillon d’images composites et d’écrans mosaïques qui font danser ensemble des images qui n’ont que peu à voir les unes avec les autres. Il réinvente ou même peut-être invente le cinéma polyrythmique à l’image – c’est le cas de le dire – de la musique polyrythmique afro-américaine qui nous submerge alors, y compris dans ses formes françaises comme Sheila, Sylvie Vartan et Johnny Halliday. Il n’hésite devant aucune référence pour ancrer son discours dans le monde moderne des flux croisés, parallèles et antiparallèles, convexes et concaves, centrifuges et centripètes de l’information Internet de nos tablettes folles et de nos téléphones soi-disant smart et qui ne sont que maelstromiques ou maelstromés. Il cite même Jacques Brel entre deux tranches d’Andy Warhol, entre une Valérie Saint Laurent qui VaiSseLle et celui qu’ils épargne d’un Emile Saint Laurent fictif qui ferait ÉSL, aisselle.

Cela permet de faire passer un  discours dominant sur Yves Saint Laurent et de le centrer sur la seule mode féminine comme s’il avait réinventé la Vierge Marie ou Marie-Madeleine, comme s’il avait réinventé les Rois Mages et la Passion pour être capable de produire quelques parures qui ne sont que des peintures superficielles de la chair qu’elles enveloppent. Yves Saint Laurent par la drogue, l’alcool, la promiscuité multi-sexuelle et la débauche poly-sexuelle a réussi a proposer à la planète et aux femmes une façon de s’habiller qui ne soit qu’une mise en valeur de leur chair pour le plus grand plaisir des magazines de mode et des journaux dits féminins. La femme est devenue un objet d’adulation non contrôlé et cette adulation non contrôlé fétichisée dans les fringues dont elles cachent ou révèlent leur chair n’est que la libération en l’homme de l’imaginaire machiste de la possession pour la seule satisfaction de pulsions sexuelles chez les hommes ne laissant aux femmes que le soin de jouer leur rôle de fétiches sexuels très richement habillés pour être tout aussi richement déshabillés.

Le film n’est vraiment fascinant que pour ceux qui ont leur conscience intellectuelle et culturelle légèrement en-dessous du nombril. La beauté de la fringue pour les femmes comme pour les hommes ne sont que les fioritures qui allument les instincts sexuels des hommes et des femmes avec des bibelots vestimentaires qui ne font que révéler l’objet du désir tout en le dissimulant, au moins partiellement, demi-nu contre demi-vêtu.

Par contre la scène de la mort est un prodige si on est capable de ne pas se laisser prendre par la lascivité des images de défilés qui défilent dans la mémoire de l’homme mourant à qui il suffira d’enlever ses lunettes pour le rendre funérairement vraiment mort.

Un film qui a tellement de nominations pour les Césars que les Jules du monde entier s’en réjouiront pendant quelque temps : leur business en sera réconforté. La mode est vraiment l’opium de tous les sexes et n’a fait que remplacer la religion qui n’était l’opium que du peuple, et Marx entendait du petit peuple puisqu’il a toujours rejeté tout ce qui n’était pas le prolétariat en dehors du peuple exploité et asservi, seul digne d’être cité par lui.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

AGOSTINO STEFFANI – PHILIPPE JAROUSSKY –­ NIOBE REGINA DI TEBE – BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA – 2015

It is necessary to consider the plot of this opera first of all because it is the most surprising political construction imaginable. Imagine a king and a queen so imbued with their own personalities and selves that they decide to become gods mind you, and they are encouraged in that folly by Jove himself when Jove rebuilds the walls of Thebes one day when the king, Anfione, asks him to protect Thebes against an attack from Creonte, some outside rival king. It is obvious that the vanity of these people is flattered by the gods in spite of the fact that these king and queen are tyrants, un the old understanding of the word: they take all decisions by themselves.

The fact is that this first situation leads to the worst imaginable events that will bring Niobe herself to destroying the Gods’ statues in one main temple. That’s how tyrants are ungrateful to the gods when the gods are dumb enough to support them. And then the whole opera explodes in the most unnatural events: an earthquake that destroys Thebes, kills all the children of Niobe and Anfione and finally brings them down since Anfione finally becomes human and kills himself and Niobe is turned into stone, by the gods I guess, or maybe because she has a volcanic and stony soul, if any soul at all, and I won’t speak of her heart she only has soft fro gods or people pretending to be gods. She gets every single gram – our ounce – of the fate she endures – deserves – though her folly will have caused the death of so many people in the meantime.

If it were for that kind of mushy plot, the opera would not be very interesting.

The first interest is the love imbroglio created by the composer and librettist. Niobe and Anfione are deeply in love with each other and yet Anfione retires and leaves his wife alone on the throne, though she is obviously not able to do the job and he knows it since he brings some local nobleman, Clearte, to help her in that task. So she gets that nobleman who is in love with her to sit on the throne though she has no real feeling for him. Thebes is attacked by Creonte who is secretly in love with Niobe, though that is purely hormonal. He fails on the battlefield thanks to Jove. Then he uses the magic of Poliferno to abduct the queen and he makes her fall in love with his impersonation of Mars, the god, and she cannot but fall in love with that god since she thinks she is a goddess. So her vanity leads her to fornicating with a god – in her head, since it is an illusion – though probably not with that Creonte who is impersonating the god. She is thus part of a blasphemous trap but by falling in it she is the only blasphemous person because she should refuse to have any sexual relation with any god, especially a false one, particularly since she does not know he is false.

You add to these scabrous and adventurous love affairs the only real one between Tiberino and Manto and then you have the romantic dimension you need to be both baroque and slightly post-baroque, and this love affair will be fully satisfied.

But this love imbroglio leads to the exploration of all kinds of love feelings from virginal unutterable desire to the most lascivious impulses. True love is at times expressed, true love unrequited and true love unsatisfied but bound to succeed.  But also false love that is trying to lure the other partner into a trap, and the totally blasphemous love for a god that can be the result of incredible vanity or of simple narrow-mindedness and limited mental means. This exploration of love is at times funny. But that does not make this opera great.

The greatness of this opera comes from the music, which sounds logical, though I know some great operas that are not necessarily very great as for their music.

Scene 13 in Act I gives the real measure of Philippe Jaroussky in Anfione’s part with a small aria that he transforms into a masterpiece. At this moment Anfione sounds like a wimp:

“Friendly spheres, now give my lips

The harmony of your rotation.

And resting my weary limbs

May the tree, the stone have motion

From my peaceful breathing.”

How can a man be that vain to think the world, the material world, the most static stones will start moving into the cosmos because he, that man, is going to start breathing life into them? Vainer than him you die! But Philippe Jaroussky makes that moment a challenge to simple beauty and both the voice and the singing, the music behind both of course, make us feel, hear the boredom and the tiredness, the weariness and the desire to escape. A wimp he sounds like, and a wimp he is. Philippe Jaroussky and his high countertenor voice even enables us to understand and imagine it is the child in the aging king that takes over and that he wants to play with the universe as if it were his private collection of Lego blocks.

The next scene gives us the full contrast with Niobe.

“I want to delight you always,

I want to be with you always.

My heart has no peace, no well-being,

It lives in constant pain

When it is far from you, my faith.”

The soprano Karina Gauvin has the perfect voice for that regret expressed in contrast with the childish caprice of going away into his play den expressed by the king. Her voice is here slightly less high in pitch but especially slightly more somber in timber and I must say the effect is amazing at this moment. We understand that this separation is bound to lead to some kind of earth shattering catastrophe because of these two voices and the deep contradictory ambitions and desires they convey.

The simple duet at the end of scene 23 Act I brings that contrast to its own acme

Anfione: My flame

Niobe: My passion

Both: Let us go to rejoice

Anfione: For you sweet pain

Niobe: My precious chain

Both: Death is pleasing to me.

And yet it will take two full acts to bring that result. But this duet is so contemplative we feel that the meaning is nothing but the mental death of love itself, love that makes the mind unable to think, reflect, be, that makes the mind dead to the world and to logic. And that feeling only comes with the music and the crossing of the two voices.

Anfione’s aria in scene 5 Act II is a prodigy of beauty both in text and music. I need to work on the Italian original here.

Dal mio petto o pianti uscite

In tributo al mio dolor

E in virtù de miei tormenti

Disciogliendovi in torrenti

In voi naugraghi ‘l mio cor.

[From my breast, O tears, glow, / in tribute to my sorrow. / By virtue of my torments, / dissolve yourself in torrents, / in you my heart will be drowned.]

The text is beautifully built around two rhymes, one embracing the other. The embracing one is rich since it covers three words and the rhyming third word is naturally only covering the vowel and the last consonant. The two words that are identical in front of these two slightly different rhyming words amplify the rhyme itself. And this rich emphatic embracing rhyme brings together a rhyme built on two three syllable words that contain only one varying consonant in the middle The meaning of some kind of torturing torment is perfectly rendered by this couple of rhyming words that are tortured and tormented under our own eyes, in fact in our own ears since they are sung.

What’s more this aria is 4:39 minutes long. It is enormous and of an extraordinary beauty that cannot and must not be described. It has to be experienced.

In Scene 9, Act II, Niobe gives us a self-centered egotistic selfish aria that becomes a sort of anthem to why such people should be punished, since they are so blind to the world and to the tricks that people can play on them. At this moment she is making love, in a way, with Poliferno, a magician who is tricking her into believing she is with a god.

“I press a god to my bosom,

My joy is made eternal.

In the beautiful rays of your face

Every sorrow becomes joy.”

Karina Gauvin makes that aria so aerial that we could hand ourselves to such an illusion of divine salvation.

In Scene 12 in the same Act II Anfione gives us another piece of the beautiful innocent perversity of a king who suddenly regresses to the state of a child in a play den.

“With warlike rhymes,

Reawaken my invincible heart

To arms.

This sorrowful soul

Now dedicates its valor

To raging war.”

We could expect some martial tone. And you can be wrong one thousand times. He is in his play den playing with his Lego blocks and his tin soldiers entirely oblivious to the world outside. He is avenging himself with his fake plastic army of invincible GIs like the tin soldiers Stephen King uses at the beginning of his latest novel, “Revival”.

The third act is providing us with a few more pleasurable pieces, like Niobe’s aria in the first scene that contains one sentence that explains the whole character amplified by the music:

“e l’ardor mio / l’ardor mio / e l’ardor mio fatal.”

Turn it the way you want this simple phrase amplified by the initial ternary repetition like the three nails in the two hands and the feet of Christ and then the adjective fatally rejected at the end like the spear going through the heart of Christ still hanging on his cross. That’s Niobe. She is so obtusely self-ego-centered that she enjoys being put to death by the suffering brought to her by her vain running after the pleasures of love. We can even wonder if for her love is not that simple pain and suffering experienced in her full dissatisfaction in the vain pursuit of love for a man who has retired, and for another who is a freeloader, and for a third one who is a magical god-looking wizard, and/or a fourth one who is a bewitched impersonation of a god by some human who is going to cause her final fall. That’s what she is, that Niobe, “vanity” made flesh, “vanity of vanities” impersonated, “vanity of vanities all is vanity” molded into cold stone.

I am afraid though the dirge Anfione sings in the fourth scene of Act III where he declares he has lost all hope is maybe not either grandiosely ironical since he has triumphed of everyone at this point, or somberly mesmerizing since he is being hypnotized by the dark side of life, the dark side of his being having stuffed his own head up the dark tunnel of his own gut. We could even dream him as a child who is crying on the hot chocolate he has spilled before drinking it. Anfione is a fool and as such the music can only be ironical, perversely hypnotizing or capriciously whimsical. And it is too flat at this point. The singing is not regenerating it.

But I must admit the eleventh and twelfth scenes of this third act, the scene of Anfione’s suicide and the subsequent scene of Niobe’s being turned into stone are worth at least 50% of any lauding praise poured on this opera. Those two scenes bring the opera to a full embodiment of the anger of gods against people who try to destroy them, and by gods we have to understand the natural order of history and the cosmos. No one has the right to question and try to change what history is doing and its long slow hesitating ambiguous course in time within the cosmic context that cannot be negated and must not be changed. Both Anfione and Niobe had tried to make history in their own image and to make gods become their own slaves under the duress of the menace of being toppling down, at least their statues in their temples.

The punishment of such people by history is divinely eternal and unfathomable. Think of how all tyrants end in history and imagine the distorted children an alliance of water and fire, extreme left and extreme right can lead to. This opera then takes a powerful meaning in the very present situation of our doubting and dubious human world.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

ANN-MARIE B. BAHR – CHRISTIANISME, GUIDE ILLUSTRÉ DE 2000 DE FOI CHRÉTIENNE – H.F. ULLMANN – AUSTRALIE – 2009

Si vous aimez les images c’est juste le livre que vous devez avoir. Si vous cherchez du savoir précis et en profondeur, vous vous trompez d’adresse, je dirai même que l’adresse de ce livre est plutôt maladroite. Pour juger un tel livre il suffit de prendre un ou deux points sur lesquels vous avez une vaste information et voir ce qu’il en est dit.

J’ai pris la période essentielle de l’Europe qui va de 800, le couronnement de Charlemagne, au 12^ème siècle et l’installation complète du féodalisme. Tout cela peut tenir en trois pages si l’on veut mais vous ne trouverez pas dans ce livre les choses suivantes sans lesquelles le féodalisme n’est pas compréhensible.

La réforme religieuse qui supprime le baptême par immersion complète au profit de la simple aspersion du fait du mouvement massif de christianisation en fait lancée par le baptême des nouveaux nés pour les protéger dans leur vie future. Mais cette massive transformation spirituelle et religieuse de l’Europe se fait par une réforme beaucoup plus profonde.

Le passage des alleux et alleutiers à la propriété féodale du fief et des serfs qui ne sont pas libres pour pouvoir appliquer la réforme religieuse et la réforme agricole sur l’entier du territoire sous la direction des Bénédictins. Les serfs sont attachés à la terre qui leur est confiée pour culture moyennant l’abandon au profit du seigneur d’une partie de la récolte. Heureux étaient ceux qui devaient abandonner un pourcentage de la récolte. Malheur à ceux qui devaient abandonner une quantité fixe de produits. Les mauvaises années causaient dans le deuxième cas des situations de disette sinon de famine.

On ne dit pas non plus  que cette réforme impose le respect des cinquante-deux dimanches, plus les trois semaines de fête religieuse (Nativité, Passion, Assomption) plus l’Ascension plus courte, soit entre soixante-quinze et quatre-vingts jours non travaillés, plus le respect des angélus.

Le livre de dit rien de la réforme agraire avec une invention, le collier pour le cheval, et le retour en force de la charrue au soc métallique des Celtes, la rotation des récoltes, la jachère, la fumure, etc. Sans compter les nouvelles cultures comme le chanvre et le métier à tisser que l’on va retrouver chez de nombreux serfs leur permettant de développer un petit artisan personnel et un petit revenu supplémentaire qui va alimenter les marchés en toile mais aussi en pouvoir d’achat.

De même la réforme commerciale n’est pas abordée car le mouvement de la Paix de Dieu lancée par les évêques d’Auvergne au 10^ème siècle n’est pas mentionné. Or c’est ce mouvement qui va permettre le développement des marchés et des foires européennes avec la protection des marchands dans leurs déplacements et dans leur séjour sur les marchés et foires.

Pas de mention de la réforme proto-industrielle des moulins à eau principalement pour le grain, l’huile, le tan (des tanneries), le chanvre (fibre et toile) et plus tard le papier ramené des Croisades. C’est cette réforme proto-industrielle, que certains appellent une révolution, qui explique le succès de la réforme religieuse et sociale en remplaçant le travail humain par le travail mécanique.

C’est aussi ces moulins qui vont amener le vélin sur le marché européen et cela va permettre la première étape de l’écrit dans cette société avec les manuscrits enluminés de ce Moyen Âge seulement possible avec ce vélin « bon marché » et léger, et ce sous le contrôle des scriptorium des monastères et donc de l’église.

Sans ces trois ou quatre siècles du Haut Moyen Âge rien de la suite n’est compréhensible. La Renaissance est dans le développement de la proto-industrie avec les moulins en propriétés partagée entre les seigneurs locaux et l’église : le développement commercial est là en germe dans ces activités et leurs profits.

La Renaissance culturelle n’est pas compréhensible si on ne voit pas le passage de l’oralité complète à une société de l’écrit qui ne trouvera son triomphe que dans l’importation de l’imprimerie au 15^ème siècle, mais cela fut largement préparé par le développement possible des universités quand les livres pouvaient exister en quelques douzaines d’exemplaires transportables en Europe. C’est la naissance de la littérature courtoise qui ne peut être pensée que dans le cadre de l’écrit sur vélin, et c’est alors la fixation sur un support perdurable de légendes et de toute une littérature de création orale mais de conservation et de transmission écrite.

Donc si vous croyez à l’importance des images précipitez vous sur ce livre. Si vous croyez à l’importance des faits et des idées, vous êtes mal conseillés de vouloir considérer ce livre. Le seul avantage important est que le livre pose le christianisme au niveau mondial, mais cela reste le plus souvent anecdotique.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

AGATHA CHRISTIE – DAVID SUCHET – HERCULE POIROT – THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION SERIES 1-13 – ITV – 1989-2010 – 2013

These seventy episodes, these eighty-four hours of film, these thirty-five DVDs are worth a mountain of gold of course. Agatha Christie created this particular character who is probably as famous as Sherlock Holmes, and that is telling a lot. The stories themselves are nearly anecdotic but the character is absolutely fabulous. And the actor composed his character so well that we really think he is the man in the story. Some extras explain that transformation of an actor into his character.

First this character is surprisingly original for an English detective story writer. He is Belgian. He is some kind of refugee in England. He kept a delicious French accent, in fact a mixture between the Belgian and the French accents of the French language. This accent is kept constant and unvarying over twenty-one years by the very same actor who is aging of course but since Poirot’s adventures stretch from the very end of the First World War to just before the Second World War this aging is natural. The actor ages the same number of years as the character.

Second the character has a distinctive physique, walks in a distinctive way, has an astonishing moustache that evolves with age but not that much, though in the last episode he reveals the most astounding secret. He dies in that last episode and the explanation of the last case is post-mortem, in fact four months after his own death. Hercule Poirot can reach beyond his own grave.

The character has a final characteristic that is particularly distinctive but also irritating. He is absolutely vain and his vanity makes him consider he is the most intelligent detective, and probably man, in the world and that his little grey cells have no equal. He has no real competitor, not even Sherlock Holmes, of course. That vanity makes him extremely nasty with most people around him and first of all his secretary, Captain Hastings and his valet-butler, not to speak of all the policemen he has to deal with. This vanity becomes a feature without which Poirot would not be Poirot. Agatha Christie made him like that and he has to be like that. She even includes in many episodes a female detective story writer who is her own impersonation as a fictional doppelganger of herself. And of course that doppelganger is not that swift and she often lets herself go into the traps of false logic, I mean false criminal logic. The logic of a criminal has little to do with that of a story teller.

But the whole series has another quality that makes it nearly real. It is rooted in real life. Poirot is rooted in England in 1918 as a veteran from the front on a convalescing period. Then the cars, the trains, the radio, and every single fixture in society move up with time little by little, year after year. All the characters, policemen and others age and go up in society, are promoted or just go away, disappear or die. The treatment of this environment, settings, buildings, people, theaters, etc, makes the series believable and true to the core.

Of course I would advise you not to watch the thirty-five DVDs in one go. Take your time and alternate four or five DVDs with something else for a few days. It may become slightly tiresome in heavy doses. But then you will find out that the various episodes are always a tremendous description of all kinds of social or cultural situations, in London and out of London, and quite a few on the continent. Of course Agatha Christie’s stories are quite realistic, but the TV production was very careful to look for and find the proper elements that makes the whole thing rich and entertaining but with enough variation for the series not to become tiring. We will also note how the political situation is clearly alluded to and evoked particularly the rise of Hitler and some Nazi party or groups in Great Britain. This political and historical realism was typical of Agatha Christie and it is perfectly kept in this series, and you will enjoy it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU