#pleaseee?

Something for Posey and Amphi inspired by this song:

I can't confirm the following piece of information, so I'm posting the update as speculation:

Jodie Comer's name has been re-added to the casting list on IMDb. Whether the casting is true or not, we do not yet know, no media has picked it up. It could be an error. Comer used to be attached to the project before backing out due to scheduling conflicts.

Lampros Kalfuntzos has been added to the IMDb page under “Egyptian Spice Market“. Could the shooting location for the spice market scene be The Cotswold Water Park we've heard about a while ago?

Scene speculation:

Today a movie extra named Alex Payne posted an Instagram photo of himself on a set, in full costume, tagging the photo with "Longcross Studios" where we know DOTN is being filmed. He is wearing a World War I Belgian army uniform. The post says: "Just been doing some filming as a Belgian soldier in the trench... it was muddy and lots of fun!"

Why his post could be related to DOTN: He’s at Longcross Studios, it’s a period piece, the picture was posted on the day DOTN started shooting, and there’s the uniform itself.

In the Agatha Christie canon, before Hercule Poirot came to England and became a private detective, he lived in Belgium. He rose to the rank of Chief of Police of Brussels and gained an international reputation through his work. He was invalided out of the Belgian army due to an injury he got at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. A French Admiral smuggled him into France, and from there on Poirot went to England, “a sad and weary refugee.” So, Poirot is not only an ex-policeman but a war veteran.

I wrote a detailed post about Poirot’s ties to the military in canon and the Murder on the Orient Express movie, from the style of his moustache, his physicality, being able to shoot a gun and handle a cane as a weapon to defend himself, to the deleted scene of Poirot saluting a picture of his former military companions. The short version is that Poirot’s military background featured in early drafts of the MOTOE movie, and Ken Branagh was excited to tackle this previously unexplored part of Poirot’s history, but it all ended up on the cutting room floor (except for the big moustache).

Ken’s Poirot is more agile, more military than previous Poirot adaptations. Would it be so unusual for DOTN to feature a flashback to Poirot’s time in the war, especially if it somehow tied to the murder mystery at hand? I don’t think they’d add it if it wasn’t important. Perhaps something to do with romance? MOTOE introduced us to young Katherine, Poirot’s past (only?) love. Did they meet during the war? Was she a war nurse like Agatha Christie? Does something about Jacqueline, Linnet and Simon remind Poirot of his past? Another military link is Poirot’s old friend and assistant on the Nile cruise, Colonel Race.

If you have information about any other period dramas with WW1 Belgian army scenes being filmed at Longcross at the moment, please let me know. The other period piece I know of that is filming at Longcross is Call the Midwife but the tv show is set in the 1950s.

Edit - October 15 2019: Another possibility is Alex Payne’s selfie is related to The King's Man (2020), a prequel to the Kingsman movies. It’s set in the early 1910s during WW1. According to IMDb, the trench scenes were shot in White Waltham, Maidenhead, UK, but the movie is also a Longcross Studios project, which would explain Payne tagging the picture with the studio name. Additionally, the movie’s trailer came out the day before. It’s unclear why Payne would say he’s “just been doing some filming”, implying it happened recently, when The King’s Man started shooting in February 2019 and would have finished long before September 30 2019 when the pic went up.

Until we know for sure what Alex Payne’s picture is about, this fan here can dream we will finally see Poirot in the Belgian army unifom, which looked like this: