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There is no shortage of adaptations based on Agatha Christie’s books, but there are even more non-adaptations that are either homages, nods to, or massively inspired by the Queen of Mystery. But before we get into her influence on mystery stories today, lets take a look back at the beginning of the genre.
Then came the Golden Age of mystery, which is thought to have started with Trent’s Last Case by E.C. Bentley in 1913. Seven years later, Agatha Christie entered the chat with The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Not only did she create a popular detective with Hercule Poirot, but she would go on to have two popular detective series (hello, Miss Marple!), and write what is considered the best selling mystery of all time: And Then There Were None.
Read on to the end for an excerpt of our featured story, “How to Read a Short Story (and Where to Find Some)!”
A Brief History of And Then There Were None
A remote island setting. Invitations sent. People dying one by one. A closed circle mystery. These are now very popular tropes that are all found in Christie’s And Then There Were None, published in 1939 in the UK, though under a different title.
Christie’s And Then There Were None was based on, and originally shared the title of, “Ten Little N—s”, a racist song “used in blackface minstrelsy in the late 19th century”. In the US the novel was published as And Then There Were None, though Ten Little Indians was also one of its titles.
While the first film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s work was the silent film The Passing of Mr. Quin in 1928, the first adaptation of And Then There Were None was a play, written by Christie in 1943, with the book’s original UK title but with a different, happier-than-the-book ending. The first film adaptation of And Then There Were None had the US title and was by René Clair in 1945, while the 2015 BBC adaptation “written by Sarah Phelps and directed by Craig Viveiros, was the first screen adaptation of And Then There Were None to include Agatha Christie’s original ending.”
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Agatha Christie’s Finger Prints Are On Everything
What happens when generations of kids grow up reading Agatha Christie and watching her adaptations? They turn into mystery loving adults—and if they happen to become creators themselves, audiences will benefit from their love of the Queen of Crime.
Mythic Quest: “The Villain’s Feast” (s4e4)
Mythic Quest (Apple TV+) is a fun workplace comedy that sneaks up on you with its smart, emotional moments, though the show presents itself simply as a show that follows a group of people working at a video game company, all with quirky personalities. (You do not have to play, know, or like video games to enjoy this series.) In the fourth and final season, the fourth episode was written as an homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and cleverly used the mystery plot to reveal fun plot twists! (I’ll keep silent on the specifics though as not to spoil the fun, and brilliance, of the episode.)
Joe has an eight-strand necklace on at the beginning of the episode: one strand for every person that’s playing the game, for every player. And as people die, her necklaces start disappearing. In the last [scene], she’s only wearing three.
…
I was like, I would love to do something to pay homage to And Then There Were None, which is the Agatha Christie book that this is largely based on. And in that book, there are 10 little figurines that start disappearing one by one from the table as people are killed. So that was our little Easter egg.”
—And a Rewatch Podcast: Mythic Quest 4×04 Recap | “The Villain’s Feast” feat. Megan Ganz & Humphrey Ker
Knives Out Film Series
The creator behind the Knives Out franchise, Rian Johnson, has been very vocal about Agatha Christie’s influence on him.
The first film, Knives Out —aka Chris Evans’ Sweater — is a twisty murder mystery whodunnit, centering a wealthy family and a PI who is clearly a nod to classic detectives. “The general thing I was aiming for with him [Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig] was the thing I talked about with Poirot. All of these detectives have some sort of thing that makes the suspects not take them seriously until it’s too late.” (Rian Johnson on Knives Out: “Agatha Christie had a modern sensibility”)
The Glass Onion, the second film in the franchise, screams And Then there Were None from the rooftops: it’s set on an island, with a group of people all invited under mysterious circumstances, and then the murders begin…
“I think she very often gets simplified in the culture in the way people think about her work. So I always find myself getting a little defensive. [Laughs.] She was doing what I describe myself as doing with genre, which is placing the whodunnit as a shell over other genres. The A.B.C. Murders is really a serial-killer thriller, and And Then There Were None is a slasher movie.”
—Rian Johnson Reaches for Another Knife
I can’t wait for the third film, Wake Up Dead Man, which is set to release sometime this year!
Only Murders In The Building
With true crime podcasting being central to the setup of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, many viewers might not initially think of Christie’s influence on this quirky show about two septuagenarians teaming up with a 29-year-old to solve murders in the apartment building they live in—and host a crime podcast about it. But even while focused on the true crime genre, and filled with guest appearances, the core of the mystery solving is once again a nod to the Queen of Mystery:
“…it felt very Agatha Christie. It’s Poirot in the room having everyone collected, and now we will tell you what happened. Our spin on that and twisting that as many times as we did felt like such a blast.”
—Only Murders in the Building Showrunner Says He “Could Never Have Predicted” the Comic Alchemy Between Its Stars
And It’s Not Just And Then There Were None!
I think part of Agatha Christie’s long reign of popularity has to do with how prolific she was, and you can find lots of her other work in non-adaptations.
See How They Run
The 2022 film See How They Run is entirely centered around Agatha Christie: it is a murder mystery comedy-spoof set amongst a West End production of The Mousetrap, which is a play Christie wrote that first opened in 1952 (and it is still running!).
“Even if you’re not a fan of Agatha Christie, per se, certainly in the [United Kingdom], it is deeply burned into our subconscious. Every Saturday night, I would sit down and watch a Poirot with my little brother when we were kids. It might feel like it waxes and wanes in the wider world, but here, it’s pretty constant.” (See How They Run team breaks down all those Agatha Christie Easter eggs)
105 years later, it’s still a great time to be an Agatha Christie fan, from her original work still being available to all the new creators honoring her in their current work. The Queen indeed.
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This week, we’re highlighting a guide to reading short stories! If you’ve been curious about what short stories have to offer and want to make them part of your reading life, get to know the form and learn where you can find some good ones so you can get started right away. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
May is Short Story month, so what’s on your reading list this month? Short stories are one of my favorite things to read right now. Life’s busy, and short stories are fiction that can fit into a hectic day. Instead of using the one-chapter-per-night method to work your way through a novel, what might it look like to read a short story each evening?
I love short stories precisely because they’re every bit as interesting, complex, and beautiful as longer fiction, but they’re more realistic to read when you’ve got a lot going on.
I have a confession: I used to hate short stories. Okay, okay, maybe “hate” is too strong a word. Let’s just say that I basically refused to read them. You might be wondering why I would have such a strong aversion to short stories.
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