winner55

I have been working my way through the Suchet Poirot series recently, and am in the middle of Series 3; but having read the eponymous novel this episode was based on, over the week-end, I jumped ahead to see what they would do with it; generally the first 3 Series have been enjoyable, and Suchet is the perfect Poirot. So my expectations were high - and my experience was correspondingly very disappointing.

Although I'm not a big Christie fan, I always enjoy a good puzzle-structured detective mystery, and Cards on the Table is one of Christie's best, in my experience. There's a fascinating puzzle within a puzzle: Four professional and amateur detectives are invited to a party with four people who seem to be unconnected to each other or to the world of crime; but host Shaitana has given Poirot the necessary hint - Each of the four non-detectives may have committed murder in the past and gotten away with it. Then, before the party ends, the host himself is murdered. To solve that murder, of course, the detectives must also solve the murders in the past the four suspects may have successfully committed without suspicion.

This doubling of the puzzle gets lost in the TV version - although we do find out that the four suspects were involved in suspicious deaths in the past, these discoveries seem revealed incidentally. Thus the investigation seems to wobble around, and interviews that are clearly connected in the novel, progress in a somewhat hap-hazard manner here.

The final third of the TV version rewrites the book in pointless and annoying ways. I am not a homophobe, and I note that the Murdoch Mysteries program has dealt with the issue of homosexuality in a sensitive manner in several important episodes. But such sensitivity is lost here, because the original story had no room for the topic, one way or other; so the lesbian/gay characters are rather forced into their roles.

Inventing familial relations between suspects not in the original book, is also a bad move; it subverts the initial set-up of having four separate suspects to investigate. It also subverts the book's sensitivity concerning how the older female suspect (much older in the book) and the younger female suspect relate to each other.

Changing an important attempted murder scene - and thus the resolution of one of the older murders - might have been successfully pulled off, if there were a reasonable rationale for doing so, but there wasn't.

All these alterations lead to an unsatisfying denouement, leaving Poirot to expound more than he needed to in the book - including exposition of facts that had not been hinted at by any clues beforehand - a dreadful detective mystery faux pas.

Finally, the TV version mishandles the ethical themes of the book. Agatha Christie always hints at sympathies for her murderers, but in classic mystery fashion, justice must be served. Three of the suspects do end up punished, however indirectly, for their original murders (the 4th is revealed as an accident). In this version, one is brought to justice, one is exonerated, and the third reconciles with a lost daughter - and drives away - Huh? I really don't know what they were thinking when they produced this. (The Brett Sherlock Holmes series also lost its way towards the end, by rewriting stories to seem arty and up-to-date.) When will these people learn that admirers of the original stories want solid dramatization of the stories as-they-are, not some clever academic's Lit. Crit. re-imaginings?

Osamu Tezuka's original Astro Boy manga was an overnight sensation, and by the mid-50s had inspired a live-action television show (very low budget, from what I can tell from the trailer for it I've seen). Then in 1962, Tezuka himself developed this animated cartoon series for television – writing, drawing, even participating in the animation with his staff of six (some of whom went on to become notable figures in the anime industry). Due to budget constraints, the series uses what is known as 'limited animation' with stock backgrounds, stock shots, very limited figure movement, etc. But I admit this actually increases the charm of the series for me; it has a quirky surrealistically mechanical aura in many of the visuals.

It should be noted that animation had been a fascination for Tezuka long before he initiated this series. His father owning a movie projector, Tezuka was, from quite an early age, fascinated with American animated films, primarily those by Walt Disney, although the main influence discernible in the Astro Boy series is that of the Fleischer Brothers. The Astro Boy series could not duplicate the slickness or gloss of the better-budgeted American animated television shows or films of the time, but it does evidence a sophisticated humor and a visual inventiveness well in advance of them. (It should be noted that Tezuka's manga were also always in advance of work being done in American comics of the same era.) Astro Boy was originally designed for Japanese males in their early teens – hence his physical appearance as a twelve-year old boy. The aesthetic psychology at work here is fairly plain. Astro looked like many of the members of his audience, but without physical blemish. However, he still represented the sense of alienation that young people often feel when entering the 'awkward years' of early puberty – he looked human, but he was 'different' – he was a robot.

Nonetheless, there were compensations for this alienation – he was extremely smart, had amazing powers, and always demonstrated a conscience superior to many of the adult humans around him. So he wasn't just different, but his difference marked him as superior. Fortunately for the world, he had no vanity, so never exhibited smug satisfaction with himself. On the contrary, he was always trying to find his way through the world, trying to be both robot and boy in a world where many could accept him as neither.

So there's the initial hook for his young audience, the process of identifying with a like, though superior (in some way) hero.

But that's not the case for adults, is it? well, certainly many of us still secretly long for our childhood after all.

But I think the appeal runs deeper. For one thing, there are those big innocent eyes of his, staring out in wonder at the brave new world of the future. He can express a number of emotions, even negative ones, but the two primary expressions we see in his face (certainly the most memorable) are a fierce determination when in action, and a winning, unambiguous smile – unambiguous because there is not the slightest hint of duplicity or of pretension in it. So Astro Boy is all of a piece – he never seems temperamental or given over to deep doubt, he never holds a grudge or engages in hidden agendas. He says what he means (and frequently takes what humans say all too literally). And of course he is always willing to help others, frequently at the risk of his own existence: he's a true hero. In many ways an ideal human being.

Except – he's a robot. And that makes all the difference.