But Joan Hickson's terrific run as Marple ended in 1992. As a lifelong admirer of Christie's works, it gives me no pleasure to report that the latest attempt to adapt the Queen of Crime's work is a dismal failure: There's no regard for Christie's prose, no idea who the series' audience is meant to be, and no goal except to further increase Netflix's intellectual property resources.
"Bundle of Love" is almost entirely exposition-focused, introducing the characters along with their emotional, social, and historical contexts, while setting the scene and stakes of the murders to be solved. Lady Eileen Brent - but please, call her Bundle - is among the bright young things of the social set, perfectly at ease in an exquisitely draped golden gown as she moves through the massive party being held at her family home.
Famously the world's longest consistently running play, Agatha Christie's Mousetrap has now been running for over 70 years, and is one of those plays that everyone is presumed to see once in their lives. The murder-mystery storyline is set in "the present", presumably England, around the time the play was published in 1952, including the continuation of World War II rationing.
When the film director Rian Johnson was a child, he picked up the final book that Agatha Christie published before her death, in 1976: "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case." The novel was sitting on a shelf in his grandparents' sprawling home, in Denver. It had a moody black cover that featured an illustration of the mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot. "It felt very adult," Johnson told me recently. "Very creepy."
A century ago, the crime fiction industry was flourishing, with significant publications such as Agatha Christie’s The Secret of Chimneys and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd redefining the genre.
The story of 'Towards Zero' begins long before a murder occurs, emphasizing the psychological buildup and complex relationships that lead to tragedy.