Agatha Christie at 50: a major exhibition, a young Poirot and a streaming revival
Fifty years after Agatha Christie’s death, the queen of the whodunnit is everywhere again.
The British Library in London opens ‘Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery’ on 30 October. The show runs until June 2027, according to the Library’s programme announcement, and brings together notebooks, manuscripts, photographs, letters and her typewriter, Variety reported.
Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 of natural causes. She was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s in Cholsey in accordance with her wishes, the BBC reported. She remains the best-selling fiction author in the world, with around 2 billion copies sold.
The television slate is doing much of the heavy lifting. The BBC and BritBox are making ‘Hercule’, a six-episode series starring 33-year-old Edward Bluemel as Poirot. It is an origin story of sorts, set in the 1920s.
James Prichard, Christie’s great-grandson and chief executive of Agatha Christie Limited, told an Edinburgh TV Festival panel in August that ‘Hercule’ shows Poirot as a younger man, not the fully-formed detective. Prichard manages the author’s literary estate.
Netflix moved first this year. Its three-part ‘Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials’, starring Mia McKenna-Bruce, arrived in January from Orchid Pictures, led by chief executive Suzanne Mackie. The adaptation swaps the book’s Lord Caterham for Lady Caterham, played by Helena Bonham Carter.
Netflix is also holding the back catalogue. That includes six seasons of ‘Marple’, starring Geraldine McEwan, which debuted in 2004, and 13 seasons of the 1990s ‘Poirot’ with David Suchet in the lead role. On film, Kenneth Branagh has directed versions of ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘A Haunting in Venice’, plus the 2022 feature ‘Death on the Nile’ with Tom Bateman and Gal Gadot.
Suchet has stayed in the orbit. He made a documentary series, a non-scripted travel show, called ‘Travels with Agatha Christie’ in 2024 and published a non-fiction book of the same name last year.
For fans, this means a rare overlap. A library exhibition for the notebooks and letters, a young Poirot for newcomers, and the classic Marple and Poirot runs for anyone who wants to start from the beginning. Fifty years on, the slot is still hers.
