The BBC ‘should stop straying from Agatha Christie’s storylines or come up with their own ideas’, an award-winning author has said.
Andrew Wilson, who has spent years researching the famous murder mystery novelist, says the Corporation has committed a number of offences against her original work.
The broadcaster has gone as far as to change the identity of the murderer in Ordeal by Innocence and turn the protagonist into the killer in The Pale Horse, despite taking no ones life in the book.
In the most recent adaptation, Murder is Easy, the investigator was switched from a retired British policeman returning to London from the Far East to a young Nigerian man coming to take a job at Whitehall.
Wilson says Christie was ‘precious’ about her work and had objected to TV adaptations which departed from her storylines whilst she was alive.
He argues that the BBC should ‘write their own novels’ because their recent adaptations ‘haven’t been as good as they could be’ because they didn’t stick to Christie’s original plot.
The recent adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy has seen David Johnson (right) play a young Nigerian man who has come to England to take a job as an investigator
A portrait of the famous and prolific mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie – who was ‘precious’ about her work and had objected to TV adaptations which departed from her storylines
Wilson told the Telegraph: ‘The last seven years on the BBC – some of them have been faithful, And Then There Were None was a brilliant production – but some of them are less faithful. I’m thinking of Ordeal by Innocence, in which the murderer was changed and the way they killed was changed.
‘And I just think if you want to do that, don’t adapt an Agatha Christie. Write your own novel. Because one thing about Agatha Christie that makes her so brilliant, and what makes her so enduring, is that she’s such an extraordinarily good plotter.
‘Screenplays, really, are all plot. It’s all about story, how character and story interact, and I think some of the adaptations, particularly the BBC ones, haven’t been as good as they could be.’
Wilson, who has written four books featuring Christie as a character, also recalled how she was ‘appalled’ by the 1960s films starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple because they had strayed too far from the original stories.
He said: ‘She was ashamed that she’d done that for money, and it took her and her relatives such a long time before they trusted anyone.
‘That’s why there is quite a big gap before the big films like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express in the 1970s.’
The Ordeal by Innocence and The Pale Horse adaptations were both written by Sara Phelps, who also gave Hercule Poirot a backstory as a Catholic priest in her version of The ABC murders.
In the BBC’s adaptation of Ordeal by Innocence, starring Bill Nighy (right) and Alice Eve (left), saw the identity of the murderer changed
Murder is Easy was adapted by writer Ejiwunmi-Le Berre, who said the change to the investigator’s identity was in homage to her family.
Responding to criticism of her plot changes in 2020, Phelps said she had ‘taken liberties’ in order to make a concise, entertaining TV programme.
She added: ‘But I always go for the beating heart of what she’s [Christie] getting at and she always throws you little clues, little quantum details.’
Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard, who also runs the novelist’s estate, said allowing Phelps to change the ending of Ordeal by Innocence was one of the hardest decisions of his working life.