Agatha Christie's New Series Marks A Major First For The Crime Mystery Author

The latest mainstream Agatha Christie adaptation, Tommy & Tuppence, marks a major first for the bestselling murder mystery author.

Rather than reimagining Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, BritBox and writer and executive producer Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s daring new original series brings Christie’s oft-forgotten dynamic duo back to the small screen: Tommy Beresford (Josh Dylan) and Tuppence Cowley (Antonia Thomas), an amateur pair of sleuths who are so much more than investigative partners.

Crucially, unlike the last time Tommy and Tuppence were seen on screen together in the BBC’s 2015 miniseries Partners in Crime — and unlike any other English-language Agatha Christie adaptation that’s come before — BritBox’s Tommy & Tuppence brings the pair, along with Christie’s trademark characterization and narrative structures, into the 21st century. This stylistic choice sets it apart from other recent and classic Christie adaptations (and those currently in the works), as Tommy and Tuppence set up their home base in the gorgeous London neighborhood of Hampstead.

Adapting Christie for the modern age for the first time with the underrated Tommy and Tuppence might seem an unusual choice. Still, according to the show’s stars, something about these characters makes them particularly well-suited to amateur sleuthing in present-day London. In an interview with ScreenRant’s El Kuiper following the premiere of Tommy & Tuppence on BritBox, Josh Dylan and Antonia Thomas agreed that there was something very “contemporary” about their dynamic. As Dylan said:

“I think they feel very contemporary. When you read the books, there’s a sort of spark and sense of humor that feels very contemporary. I know Antonia has spoken previously about how Tuppence feels like a very modern woman; I think maybe it’s something to do with that. “

Christie wrote five full-length novels covering Tommy and Tuppence’s sleuthing careers, from their first spy-thriller adventure in 1922’s The Secret Adversary — published eight years before Miss Marple’s first murder mystery — to the couple being forced out of retirement in 1973’s Postern of Fate. “They just feel real… in the books, it spans their lifetime, basically, right? That sort of offers a lot of possibilities, a lot of nooks and crannies you can explore,” Dylan continued.

Thomas concurred, explaining how the duo’s status as amateur detectives makes it possible for them to cross over into a new era:

“I think also, the modern-day sleuth. You know, the show opens with ‘we all love a true-crime podcast.’ And it is true, like that feels like a very modern-day thing; [we] love listening to serials or any of those things coming out and figuring out who’s done what and what’s coming next. So them being like very normal people, stumbling across a situation and then going, ‘hang on a second, can we figure this out ourselves?’ Feels like a very modern setting, essentially.”

“They’re not professionals. With Poirot, it’s in his blood. You know he’s going to solve it before he even opens his mouth,” Dylan added, sharing that, to him, Tommy and Tuppence’s mishaps and mistakes are part of their charm, as they try to resurrect Tommy’s aunt’s former detective agency, Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives:

“With Tommy and Tuppence, hopefully in a kind of charming way, they’re very hapless; they stumble into it, and then they kind of realize their potential. I think that’s what people can hopefully connect to. (Laughs) They’re definitely not perfect, and they’re sort of working like normal people would in today’s world, or try to do.”

The show’s 21st-century setting isn’t the only thing that sets Tommy & Tuppence apart in an overwhelmingly saturated detective drama landscape. It also blends two wildly different genres: murder mysteries and romance. Tommy and Tuppence may currently be exes, but there’s still a spark, one that brings them closer together as both romantic and investigative partners. When asked how that informed their performances, Thomas said:

“I think one feeds the other really nicely. I think Phoebe’s writing is so clever in the way that she kind of [wove] the two together. And I think the solving of the crimes and the kind of unpicking of what’s happened as two amateurs is kind of where they find the romance? Sort of, bizarrely. So yeah, it actually wasn’t too difficult. You didn’t sort of think about them as two separate things….
It’s also a kind of like grounding; it’s a sort of nice emotional map to kind of ground them within the sort of the intricacies of figuring out what’s going on in whichever case, because there are so many details and it can be quite expositional, that stuff. There’s a lot of specificity to the details to get through, so it was quite nice to have the emotional guide of what’s going on with them to kind of help you play, figuring out the details of the case. It was quite nice to have that.”

It’s certainly different from other contemporary crime and detective dramas with a similar tone, like Ludwig or Death Valley. Both shows have their own unique angles and hooks, but neither actively includes nor celebrates romance as a genre. As Dylan put it:

“It feels very unusual in that everyone, of course, has the kind of Agatha Christie lexicon, and that language, and the grammar of it all, which is beautiful and people love. But having a kind of pulsing, rom-com feeling going through that — I may be wrong here, but I don’t think I’ve seen that before. It feels like, like Antonia said, they feed each other; it’s really great as a performer and being an actor in it, because it also feels really real and human. It’s very broad and opens it up, and you’re accessing — it sounds maybe pretentious — but there’s a kind of heart; this show is so much about heart and feeling, and it’s also about the intellectual working out of the cases. You’re getting to do quite a lot as an actor, which is nice.”

Credit: Lara Cornell/Courtesy of BritBox

Of course, a great detective duo doesn’t necessarily have to be romantically involved. As long as they complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses and work as a team, they’ll be able to solve the case eventually (or, as in this series, three cases, told across six episodes). Tommy and Tuppence are unique in Christie’s canon in that they essentially grew up and matured alongside the author. Each new novel reintroduced them at a different stage in their lives. So what, in this younger, newer, modern version, makes them so compatible as detectives working together?

Antonia Thomas: “Tommy being a crime writer, being really meticulous with details, and really focused and considered; I think is a really good balance to Tuppence, who’s just like completely opportunistic, a bit hot-headed.”
Josh Dylan: “Brave. Brave and wonderful.”
Antonia Thomas: “Yes, but [she] kind of acts before she thinks. The two of them are kind of yin and yang. So they kind of very much balance one another out. When she needs the brakes put on so they can think about the details, that’s what Tommy does, and when he needs a bit of a push, she’s like right in there with it. So, I think they balance each other out. And then there’s obviously moments when, like, more often Tuppence annoys Tommy because she’s too impulsive and kind of gets things wrong because she doesn’t think first.”

That’s not all, though. In the show, though Tommy and Tuppence circle each other romantically, they aren’t fully involved. They run into each other randomly at a wedding, looking for a new challenge as they face issues in their respective careers. Tommy doesn’t just want to work with Tuppence because he’s interested in her — in fact, Tuppence is married — but because they also share a genuine friendship, a deep bond that helps them feel secure in their professional partnership. As Dylan explained:

“They also care about each other so much. I know it’s complicated; let’s just say that, and it gets more complicated, but I think propelling them throughout it all is like a real deep affection and loyalty to each other. Despite how complicated it gets, they’ve got each other’s backs, and they can rely on each other, and I think that’s probably, when you get into some hairy situations, that’s arguably the most important thing. That whatever they’re going through, they’re a team, and they’ll be there for each other, and they know that about each other, which is, I think, part of why they are drawn to each other.”

Tommy and Tuppence are two of the detective genre’s most enduring characters, a duo that, despite not being as popular or well-known as some of the Queen of Crime’s other sleuths, has withstood the test of time. Who knows? Perhaps Tommy & Tuppence will start a new wave of modern Agatha Christie adaptations.

The first two episodes of Tommy & Tuppence are available to stream now, only on BritBox. New episodes arrive weekly on Tuesdays.