Agatha Christie wasn’t Tolstoy or Austen - but she knew how to write snappy mystery stories with memorable characters. That’s why she remains one of the world’s best selling authors. So why do so many recent Agatha adaptations keep her titles and bastardize and betray her beloved characters?
Feb 1, 2026 01:10I know there are a million more important problems in the world right now, but I just started watching Netflix new adaptation of Christie’s Seven Dials Mystery and my husband is tired of listening to me yell at the TV screen. I mean…if you want people to be gored to death by bulls…you do you.
But please don’t call it Agatha Christie. (And don’t even get me started on Kenneth Branagh’s bizarro « take » on Hercule Poirot.)
There are truly great Agatha Christie adaptations out there. Hard to top the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express, or Peter Ustinov’s version of Death on the Nile. Or David Suchet’s Poirot. Or Joan Hickson, the perfect Miss Marple. So it can be done.
But why pretend you are making an Agatha Christie thingy if you don’t like her plot or her characters? Do you honestly think you can write a better mystery?
Coda to say some of Christie’s books can be appalling racist and antisemitic and I don’t excuse any of that. But you can leave all THAT out - without ruining her stories. (Thanks. I feel much better now. And maybe I’ll reread Seven Dials on the plane this week, as a palate cleanser.)
