ITV1 is showing the two hour The Mystery of the Blue Train starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. The film starts at 8pm this evening.

The Mystery of the Blue Train is from series 12 of the David Suchet Poirot series - the latest to have been screened - and was premiered on ITV1 on New Year's Day.

Hercule Poirot appeared on film for the first time in 1931. Alibi was an adaptation of Michael Morton's stage version of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). He was played by the tall, dark and handsome matinee idol Austin Trevor. In spite of his physical unsuitability, Trevor played the dapper detective in two more films, Black Coffee (1931), an adaptation of Christie's first play, and Lord Edgware Dies (1934) based on the 1933 novel.

HICKORY DICKORY DOCK

US title: HICKORY DICKORY DEATH UK publication: 1955 (Collins) US publication: 1955 (Dodd, Mead)

The story has no real connection with the nursery rhyme. Poirot is introduced to the affair through Miss Lemon, making her first appearance in a Poirot novel. Her sister, who runs a boarding house for students, has had an outbreak of petty theft. Poirot investigates, and the trail leads to murder.

David Suchet returned as Hercule Poirot with eight new two hour dramas after a break of a few years.

David Suchet began filming Poirot TV films again in June 2003. The first of these was Five Little Pigs followed by Sad Cypress, Death on the Nile and The Hollow.

David Suchet returned to play Hercule Poirot in 2004 in the remake of Death on the Nile. The film was premiered on UK television in April 2004.

Hercule Poirot travels all the way to Baghdad to see an old flame only to find out that she is not there. Poirot hopes she will arrive later but Captain Hastings tells him: "Look here. I know a thing or two about women. She won't come."

Hercule Poirot collapses at the dinner table and his doctor determines he is too obese and sends him off for a break in Devon to recover.

Evil under the Sun was filmed in the 1980s with Peter Ustinov as Poirot, setting the film in the Mediterranean. The new version is set in Burgh Island, where Agatha Christie wrote the novel.