Is Agatha Christie Being Adapted to Death?

On September 15, the day on which Agatha Christie was born 136 years ago, a new adaptation of her work will drop on BritBox. Yes, another one. This 6-part series features her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, the amateur secret service agents who appear in four Christie novels and have now been re-imagined as a hip young couple in 21st century London.It is not hard to modernize Tommy and Tuppence, who were conceived — in 1922 — as the very model of an equal partnership. Tuppence is a feminist figure and Tommy likes her that way. A century ago, this was modern indeed. Today, of course, it has no surprise value at all. The couple could have strayed out of any contemporary TV set-up so calling the show “Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence” is not really accurate.Agatha Christie has very little to do with what is on screen. She is simply the “attached” star name who ensured that it got commissioned in the first place. The Queen of Crime has, indeed, become one of the world’s biggest brands, Marvel in tweeds, the generator of a veritable conveyor belt of screen adaptations. Also on its way is the BBC’s reimagining of her detective Hercule Poirot as a young man, played by Edward Bluemel (#hotpoirot, as the hashtag has it), while Sir Kenneth Branagh — maker of three lucrative Christie movies — has mused publicly upon a desire to adapt “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas.” There is also a forthcoming film, starring Felicity Jones, about an episode in Christie’s own life, “Eleven Missing Days.”Fifty years after her death Agatha Christie is a monolith of indestructible fame, to whom global production companies must offer up daily thanks. Frankly, it is hard to imagine the screen industry without her.Agatha Christie receiving an award for ‘The Mousetrap,’ in the company of John Mills and Richard Attenborough at the Savoy Hotel, London, on April 13th 1958. Via Bob Haswell/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesWhat on earth would she have made of it all? As a famously private individual — ‘Will Agatha Christie ever consent to be interviewed?’ lamented her US agent in 1965 — she would have loathed any notion of a biographical film (her daughter Rosalind brought a failed lawsuit against the last one, “Agatha” in 1978). As for the adaptation conveyor belt — well, for sure she would have liked the money. Through no fault of her own, she spent years in a taxation hell from which her gentlemanly agent was unable to extract her; today she would be J.K. Rowling-level rich, and as a generous free-spender she would have enjoyed that.Nor, despite her careful appearance of modesty, would she have been entirely surprised by how brightly her flame burns on. She had a healthy sense of her own worth and knew that she had the power of pleasing.That said, she would have had little time for most of the thirty-plus films and hundred-plus TV adaptations that have ensued since 1928, when “The Passing of Mr. Quin” got the cinematic show on the road. As a lover of the theatre, she watched television only for the horse racing, and — although she enjoyed Billy Wilder’s 1957 film “Witness of the Prosecution” — in later life turned down numerous requests from producers. Having been dismissive of earlier films such as the 1945 René Clair-directed “And Then There Were None,” actually rather good, her experience with MGM in the 1960s left her deeply bruised.A rather poor deal had sold forty Christie properties — including the books that became vehicles for Margaret Rutherford, in the role of Miss Marple — to MGM for $75,000. Four Rutherford films were made and, however much Christie liked and admired their star, she thought the films pretty dire. Perhaps naively, she was also distressed at the liberties taken with her material (for instance the 1963 film “Murder at the Gallop,” a random interpretation of “After the Funeral,” puts Miss Marple in a riding school).“I really feel sick and ashamed of what I did when I joined up with MGM,” wrote Christie in 1964. “One does things for money [in fact it went in tax] and one is wrong to do so — since one parts with one’s literary integrity.”So she was wary, a few years later, when approached by the late Lord Mountbatten, whose son-in-law wanted to produce a film of “Murder on the Orient Express.” “I must tell you frankly,” she replied, “that I am in a difficult position as regards films of my stories. They have been so painful to see, such awful scripts, and such bad casting…” It is fortunate that she succumbed to Mountbatten’s aristocratic blandishments, because the film — directed by Sidney Lumet in 1974 — was superb, achieving an immaculate balance between sumptuous, borderline-camp style and sincerely-played substance.Albert Finney and Lauren Bacall in ‘Murder on the Orient Express,’ 1974. Via EMI Film Distributors / Corbis/ Getty ImagesFor the Christie brand, it was also highly significant. The film’s uber-A-list cast – Lauren Bacall, John Gielgud, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman and so on – served to emphasize the fact that Agatha Christie, too, was a stellar name, fit like theirs to be in lights.Since then, what has compared? The similarly star-laden “Death on the Nile”(1978) is less dynamic but still highly enjoyable. The Branagh remakes are somewhat pointless, although his “A Haunting in Venice” (2023) — which plays fast and loose with Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party” — pays witty homage to her tropes and remains mysteriously respectful. A little-known version of “Crooked House” (2017), starring Glenn Close, goes full noir melodrama and is rather good. Nevertheless, as Christie film adaptations go, nothing has come close to “Orient Express.” Surely it should have done by now?As for television: Again, it seems, they did things better in that other country of the past. Viewers still adore the BBC “Miss Marple” (1984-92), starring an unimprovable Joan Hickson, and with a tonal integrity that is consolatory yet not unreal, faithful without being slavish. ITV’s “Poirot,” in which Sir David Suchet played the role over seventy episodes between 1989 and 2013, are also widely loved, although these are more variable in quality.Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. Via Wikimedia CommonsWatch “Poirot,” in fact, and it is clear how Christie adaptations have evolved in recent years, along with the 21st century revisionism that has seen her image shift from matronly puzzle-maker to a kind of drawing-room Dostoevsky (both are inaccurate). The early “Poirots” are pure “period drama,” heavy on the carmine lipstick and hired-for-the-day Lagondas. This plays to Christie’s Golden Age aspect, in which corpses are dressed for dinner, yet it does her a disservice — there is more to her than that. Indeed later episodes went scavenging for subtext, exposing the human dynamic within her impersonal geometry. The sets darkened with doom, and Poirot acquired so much depth as to become an audition part for King Lear.Taking this further, the BBC commissioned a series of blood-smeared reboots in the 2010s. These gleefully dramatized the hangings and couplings that are left implicit in the original, and — in “The ABC Murders” (2018) — reimagined John Malkovich’s Poirot as besieged by xenophobes and a beleaguered metaphor for Brexit. Inventive? Yes. But also as off the mark as when he was trapped in a toytown land of spats and square crumpets. Most art today is politicized, and here was the politicizing of Agatha Christie, who was used as a means to attack the polite, privileged world that she herself embodied.The irony, of course, is that all this tweaking is in fact a serious tribute, like a theatre that stages “Hamlet” as an AI construct because it knows that “Hamlet” can take it. Those who make Christie their plaything understand that she will always save them from falling, that she is the ultimate safety net. So what will come next? Here’s an idea: An adaptation that truly trusts the original, with its essential tension between the façade and what lies beneath, and plays it straight. Now wouldn’t that be radical?

Is Agatha Christie Being Adapted to Death?

Is Agatha Christie Being Adapted to Death?

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