BBC and Britbox develop series with Agatha Christie as fictional character

The BBC and BritBox International are developing a new television series titled The Detection Club, starring iconic authors including Agatha Christie herself. A secretive interwar literary club—whose members include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Gilbert Keith Chesterton—is about to become much less secretive. The BBC and BritBox International are developing The Detection Club, a new television series starring these iconic authors in a fictional detective series.


Agatha Christie

The series will feature a "mystery of the week" format, with fictional versions of Christie, Sayers, and Chesterton solving a new case each episode. This gives the writers, once the biggest names in the detective genre, a role as on-screen sleuths themselves. Filming is scheduled for next summer, with potential locations in the West Midlands in the United Kingdom.

The real Detection Club was founded almost 100 years ago as an exclusive, closed community of crime writers who met regularly to dine and advise each other on the technical aspects of their stories. They worked according to "Knox's Commandments," a set of rules that stipulated that the reader always had a fair chance of guessing the perpetrator themselves.

Under the leadership of Agatha Christie, the club reached its peak in the 1930s, widely considered the golden age of detective fiction. Christie wrote world-famous books about Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

Sayers was the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey, with well-known titles such as Strong Poison and Whose Body?. Chesterton, the club's first president, is best known for the Father Brown book series—which has already been successfully adapted into films by the BBC, BritBox, and BBC Studios, starring Mark Williams.


Gilbert Keith (G.K.) Chesterton

While casting for the roles of Christie, Sayers, and Chesterton has not yet been announced, speculation is already rife as to who will portray these literary giants. The series is being produced by BBC Studios Drama Productions, but neither the BBC nor BritBox or BBC Studios have yet made an official statement about the project.

With its unique blend of fiction and historical figures, a meta-concept about crime writers solving their own mysteries, and the nostalgic setting of the 1930s, The Detection Club seems like an original and promising addition to the contemporary detective scene.