New Agatha Christie adaptations coming to the BBC

This morning, BBC One announced a major new Partners in Crime adaptation for Agatha Christie’s 125^th celebration year, and here at Dead Good we cannot contain our excitement.

The series will see David Walliams (Little Britain) and Jessica Raine (Call The Midwife) starring as the crime-solving duo Tommy and Tuppence, the husband and wife double-act who featured in four of Christie’s novels – The Secret Adversary, N or M?, By The Pricking of My Thumbs and Postern of Fate – as well as a collection of short stories, Partners in Crime.

Set in 1950s post-Blitz Britain, Thomas and Prudence Beresford find themselves caught up in investigations of murder and cold war conspiracy. The combination of Tommy’s cautious, practical approach and Tuppence’s impulsive intuition make the two a force to be reckoned with.

Speaking about his new role, Walliams explained: ‘In bringing these thrilling stories to the screen, it is our ambition for Tommy and Tuppence to finally take their rightful place alongside Poirot and Marple as iconic Agatha Christie characters’.

This is not the first time an attempt has been made to dramatise Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence stories – the most notable perhaps being 1983’s Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime which saw ten episodes on TV. Despite such attempts, the sleuthing duo have not yet managed to achieve the same level of popularity as Christie’s much loved characters Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Walliams commented, ‘I was first drawn to the delicious notion of a married couple solving crimes together, and the more I read of the Tommy and Tuppence novels and short stories, the more I realised they are among Christie’s very best work’.

The first three episodes of the new series, ‘The Secret Adversary’, will be written by Zinnie Harris (Spooks, Born with Two Mothers), with episodes 4-6, ‘N or M?’ by Claire Wilson (Where There Is Darkness, Twist).  The series will be directed by Edward Hall (Restless, Downton Abbey).

Partners In Crime is the first of two major new Christie dramas for the BBC in 2015. The second will be a new production of Christie’s fantastic And Then There Were None, one of her most popular novels of all time.

2015 can’t come soon enough.