‘Agatha Christie inspired The Traitors,' says James Pritchard, great-grandson of legendary author
"I love that murder mystery is growing in popularity."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – and judging by the number of TV programmes that have borrowed from Agatha Christie, the crime writer would have been very flattered indeed.
Her great-grandson, TV and film producer James Prichard, who manages Christie's literary and media rights, is delighted by the trend for Christie-ish murder mysteries like the Knives Out film franchise and Only Murders in the Building, starring Daniel Craig and Steve Martin respectively. But most of all, he loves the BBC’s ratings-busting show The Traitors.
He believes the show – hosted by Claudia Winkleman – is based on And Then There Were None, the famous Christie novel published in 1939, in which a group of people are stranded on an island and murdered, one by one.
The Traitors also includes tropes associated with Christie, such as an ornate library and luxury train, often used as a plot device in Christie’s stories.
"I think The Traitors is brilliant. It’s absolutely based on an Agatha Christie murder-mystery concept," Prichard says of the show, a game of trust and treachery that is credited with reviving reality TV.
"At the beginning of the series, they're on the train. They’ve got the board with all the faces being picked off, one by one. They’ve got the library, it’s everything Agatha Christie. It’s And Then There Were None in lots of ways."
He adds: "There's a recognition amongst a lot of the crime-writing fraternity that my great-grandmother is an inspiration. It’s great. I love that murder mystery is growing in popularity."
Christie adaptations have always been hugely popular – but in the '70s and '80s there was often a twee element to the movies and TV shows, such as those starring Peter Ustinov and David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, and Joan Hickson as Miss Marple.
When writer Sarah Phelps started adapting Christie's books for the BBC in 2015, including Ordeal by Innocence and The ABC Murders, she brought a darkness to the much-loved crime capers.
Since then, heavyweights Hugh Laurie and Kenneth Branagh have both made Christie adaptations: the former created Why Didn't They Ask Evans? for BritBox, while the latter has made big-screen versions of Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice. The ABC Murders starred John Malkovich, while a new BBC three-parter, Towards Zero, stars Hollywood A-lister Anjelica Huston.
Says Prichard, executive producer of Towards Zero: "I think one of the most rewarding things is the fact that people are taking Agatha Christie more seriously.
"One of the ways you can judge that is the kind of people who are involved in our projects, be it Ken Branagh, Hugh Laurie, Anjelica Huston or John Malkovich. We’re in a different place than we have been at any time in my lifetime. That's really special and means a lot to me."
Prichard credits Phelps with showing Christie in a new light, by pulling out the more serious elements from her novels and noticing how often she writes about complex issues such as PTSD, suicide, grief and abuse.
He says: "There's a tendency sometimes for Agatha Christie to be a little bit camp, and I don't like the camp. I think, broadly speaking, David Suchet as Poirot stayed the right side of that, but they weren't as serious as what we're doing now."
"Sarah opened my eyes to something I hadn't properly seen. I credit her with my education in my great-grandmother’s work."
That’s not to say Prichard doesn’t approach adaptations of Christie’s novels without thinking about modern-day sensibilities. The more recent adaptations have so far avoided that unpleasant modern trope of focusing on young female victims dying at the hands of a man.
"We do have quite a few of those in Agatha Christie," admits Prichard. "It’s something that’s a challenge these days; there’s too much of it in crime fiction. There's possibly a bit too much of it in my great-grandmother's works for comfort.
"You just have to be careful. I got my daughter to read The Body in the Library when she was quite young, and didn't really think through the fact that it starts with a young girl being killed. So, it’s an awareness we have."
After the darker Phelps stories, Towards Zero, adapted by Rachel Bennette, has returned to a slightly lighter tone with its sumptuous story of a passionate love triangle – Nevile Strange, his ex-wife Audrey and second wife Kay, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Ella Lily Hyland and Mimi Keene – set on the gorgeous Devonshire coast and featuring hedonistic scenes of dancing and jazz along with costumes to die for.
Is this a response to the trend for cosy crime, such as the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club? "I hate the phrase cosy crime," says Prichard, "and I don't think it’s what my great-grandmother wrote, but her books had humour and I don't think everything needs to be as dark as Sarah made it. This one is a little lighter and I can certainly see us doing more."
Might that include a resurgence for Miss Marple? The BBC adaptations of all 12 Miss Marple novels, with Joan Hickson in the lead role, were screened in more than 30 countries and ended in December 1992. An origins film telling the story of a young Marple, starring Jennifer Garner, was announced in 2011 but never made.
Prichard says that a new drama is in the works. "I couldn’t be more excited," he enthuses, while keeping schtum on the nature of the production. "I’ve been trying to get something for Miss Marple off the ground for a very long time. For good reasons, Poirot has stolen her limelight since time began. I re-read all the Marple stories five years ago and I'd forgotten how good they were.
"Poirot has perhaps three or four of the all-time great Agatha Christies, but if you did a top 10, you'd get at least two or three Marples in there. She's underestimated. My great grandmother wrote a lot of strong women, Miss Marple being the obvious one, and Audrey and Kay in Towards Zero being further examples.
"She was an extremely interesting woman, because part of her was very shy and retiring, but I think she was also a forceful person. She would claim not to have been a feminist, but she absolutely thought she was as powerful as any man who she came across. And that’s the kind of woman she wrote about."
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Agatha Christie's Towards Zero will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from Sunday 2nd March.
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