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Hercule Poirot endures as one of the greatest detectives in all fiction. Created by the world's bestselling author, Agatha Christie, in 1920, Poirot featured in 54 short stories and 35 novels, a literary career spanning 55 years. However, Poirot's gentlemanly demeanor and brillaint mind have also left an indelible mark on the cinematic world, with a list of TV or movie adaptations nearly as long as Christie's original stories. To help you make sense of it all, Popverse presents this complete watch order of all Hercule Poirot adaptations.

Every Hercule Poirot adaptation in release order:

• The Alphabet Murders (1965, Movie)
• Murder on the Orient Express (1974, Movie)
• Death on the Nile (1978, Movie)
• Evil Under the Sun (1982, Movie) 
• Thirteen at Dinner (1985, Made-for-TV Movie)
• Dead Man's Folly (1986, Made-for-TV Movie)
• Murder in Three Acts (1986, Made-for-TV Movie)
• Appointment with Death (1988, Movie)
• Peril at End House [Russian: Загадка Эндхауза] (1989, Movie)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 1 (1989, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 2 (1990, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 3 (1990, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 4 (1992, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 5 (1993, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 6 (1995, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 7 (2000, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 8 (2001, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (2001, Made-for-TV Movie)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 9 (2003, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (2004, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 10 (2005, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 11 (2008, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 12 (2009, TV)
• Agatha Christie's Poirot, series 13 (2013, TV)
• Murder on the Orient Express (2017, movie)
• Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders, (2018, TV)
• Death on the Nile (2022, Movie)
• A Haunting in Venice (2023, Movie)

Above you can see all of the movies and television programs that were based on an Agatha Christie-written story starring Hercule Poirot. Some notes to make here: Firstly, there are three early adaptations of the Poirot stories made in the 1930s starring Austin Trevor as the Belgian detective:

• Alibi (1931)
• Black Coffee (1931)
• Lord Edgware Dies (1931)

These were not included in the list because, as of this writing, they are believed to have been lost. The second note is that Poirot's animated adaptation, Japanese anime Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, is incredibly difficult to find DVD copies of, and thus is hard to put on a watch order.

How many Poirot shows are there?

There have been three Hercule Poirot adaptations that fit the TV series format - Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989), Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (2004), and The ABC Murders (2018). If you want to count Made-for-TV movies, however, then consider also adding Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man's Folly (1986), Murder in Three Acts (1986), and Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (2001).

How many actors have played Poirot?

Ten actors have played Hercule Poirot. They are listed as follows:

• Austin Trevor - Alibi (1931), Black Coffee (1931), Lord Edgware Dies (1931)
• Tony Randall - The Alphabet Murders (1965)
• Albert Finney - Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
• Peter Ustinov - Death on the Nile (1978 film), Evil Under the Sun (1982 film), Appointment with Death (1988), Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man's Folly (1986), Murder in Three Acts (1986)
• Anatoliy Ravikovich - Peril at End House (1989)
• David Suchet - Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989)
• Kōtarō Satomi - Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (2004, TV)
• Alfred Molina - Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (2001)
• Kenneth Branagh - Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Death on the Nile (2022), A Haunting in Venice (2023)
• John Malkovich - Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders (2018)

Is there a new TV series about Hercule Poirot?

Yes. Britbox & the BBC are producing Hercule, as reported by Deadline. The show serves as a prequel to the Poirot mysteries written by Agatha Christie, and will star Edward Bluemel of Castlevania: Nocturne fame as a young version of the detective. As of this writing, the series is slated for a 2027 release, but no specific release date has been confirmed. Recently, the BBC unveiled their first look at Bluemel as the young Hercule Poirot, which you can see above.

Which Poirot story was deemed unfilmable?

While "unfilmable" might be a bit of a strong term, there is one of Agatha Christie's Poirot stories that has not gotten a 1-to-1 cinematic treatment, even by the near-completist producers of Agatha Christie's Poirot. That would be The Lemesurier Inheritance, a short story published in 1923. However, as pointed out by the Investigating Poirot blog, elements of the short story were worked into the show's series 13, episode 4, The Labours of Hercules.

Why did David Suchet quit Poirot?

This is a misconception. Longtime Hercule Poirot actor David Suchet did not "quit" his role, he merely finished it. After 13 seasons and 24 years of Agatha Christie's Poirot, the show just about covered the whole of Christie's Poirot shorts and novels, and thus, Suchet's time came to an end.