The BBC's New Detective Series Isn't "Agatha Christie Meets Sherlock," It Turns Agatha Christie Into Sherlock

While the BBC’s upcoming detective drama sounds like a fitting replacement for Sherlock, the show finds a fascinatingly meta use for Hercule Poirot’s real-life creator Agatha Christie. Technically, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories represent some of the earliest pieces of popular detective fiction in literary history. However, this can be a little misleading, as the closely related murder mystery genre is what many readers think of when discussing detective fiction.

Stories involving a group of colorful characters meeting in an isolated location, like a mansion or a private island, where one of them is killed off, and everyone has a motive, aren’t just traditional detective fiction. Instead, the above summary belongs to a conventional murder mystery novel, and the mother of that genre is the inimitable Agatha Christie. The creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Christie also effectively invented the template for the slasher movie with her 1939 novel, And Then There Were None.

It is tough to overstate the importance of Agatha Christie’s writing, which shaped everything from the BBC’s 14-season hit Death in Paradise to Hollywood’s Knives Out movies. However, Christie wasn’t the only legendary author of murder mysteries. The satirist GK Chesterton and Christie’s contemporary Dorothy L. Sayers also both wrote important entries into the genre, which would explain why all three literary figures are set to star in the very meta upcoming murder mystery series The Detection Club.

Based on an idea by the prolific detective fiction author Simon Brett, of Blotto and Twinks fame, The Detection Club will see fictionalized versions of Chesterton, Sayers, and Christie herself invited to a mysterious London location to investigate a real murder. As any fan of their work will know, all three writers were big personalities, so one can anticipate plenty of disagreements between the club’s members.

To exacerbate this messy collaboration, the group must work alongside the rookie cop D.I. Greenway, according to the BBC's official series synopsis. Like a lot of recent Christie adaptations, The Detection Club will be a period piece that leans into both the rapid social upheaval and the glamour of the group’s shared era. However, this isn’t the only thing that makes the series intriguing.

The Detection Club Stands Out In A (Very) Crowded Genre

There is no shortage of murder mystery shows on streaming right now, and no sign of their popularity slowing down anytime soon. If viewers want a light-hearted, comedic take on the genre, they can choose between Apple TV’s The Afterparty, Netflix’s The Residence, Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, CBS’s Elsbeth, ABC’s High Potential, or Peacock’s Poker Face, among others.

If something darker and grislier is the order of the day, Prime Video’s Scarpetta replaced CSI with one of the starriest casts ever assembled for a streaming series. With so many murder mystery shows that all boast different hooks and styles to choose from, it is tough to see how a new outing in the genre could hope to stand out. This is even more obvious when, in the last year alone, Prime Video’s Sherlock Holmes prequel Young Sherlock was released, and an upcoming Hercule Poirot prequel was announced.

There is even another Agatha Christie show on the way at the same time as The Detection Club, as BritBox is hard at work on an adaptation of the Tommy and Tuppence books, Agatha Christie's Tommy & Tuppence, that is set to star Antonia Thomas and Josh Dylan as the title characters. Thus, the fact that The Detection Club plays with real-life history by casting Christie herself as its heroine is an effective way to add much-needed novelty to the show, making the BBC’s upcoming Sherlock replacement a must-watch even in a flooded genre.

Source: BBC