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‘a haunting in venice’ review: michelle yeoh and tina fey join kenneth branagh in his snoozy agatha christie adaptation.

A Halloween seance in a dark palazzo brings detective Hercule Poirot out of retirement in Branagh's third run at the role.  

By Caryn James

Caryn James

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Like Agatha Christie herself, Kenneth Branagh found a reliable formula for mysteries. In his two previous adaptations of Christie novels, he directed and played the cerebral detective Hercule Poirot amid a star-filled cast, in an exotic location with at least one killer on the loose. Murder on the Orient Express (2017), with Michelle Pfeiffer and Johnny Depp, had an enjoyably retro, over-the-top style. Death on the Nile (2022) was a bit less starry and diverting.

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The story takes place in 1947 and is very loosely based on a lesser-known, late-career Christie novel, Hallowe’en Party (1969), altering the plot, changing existing characters and adding new ones. And it shifts Christie’s English country-house location to Venice, where Poirot has retired and putters around his rooftop garden. His old friend, the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, arrives, solidly played by Tina Fey in ’40s-era sharp-tongued American mode, as if she’s channeling Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. Ariadne entices Poirot to come to a Halloween seance in a supposedly haunted palazzo, to expose a clairvoyant she is certain is a charlatan. Michelle Yeoh , always a delight to see, plays the medium, and at one point is spun around wildly like a woman possessed. But lower your expectations: She has a much smaller role than the trailer suggests.

Lower your expectations for Venice, too. The change of location should have worked great, playing right into the formula. The film opens with promising, skewed angles on the city, and there are a few outdoor scenes at the end. But most of it takes place in the gloomy palazzo, more clichéd than spooky, with shadowy staircases inside and a canal out there conveniently located for drowning. The interiors are actually a set in Pinewood Studios, with a production design of drab colors, shot with a muddy look.

In typical Christie mode, the suspects gather together, including the caddish ex-fiancé (Kyle Allen) and Poirot’s Italian bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio). Jamie Dornan , who starred as the father in Branagh’s semi-autobiographical Belfast , plays a doctor with PTSD, and Jude Hill, the child who played the young Branagh character there, is his precocious son here. Hill is a genuine talent, a vivid presence onscreen. And Camille Cottin ( Call My Agent ) brings fierce conviction to the role of Rowena’s housekeeper, who used to be a nun. Cottin stands out because so many in the large cast seem to be sleepwalking through it all.  

That doesn’t apply to Branagh, who has always been a perfect fit for the hammy character of Poirot. In each of his Christie films, Branagh brings depth and backstory to the person behind the mustache, with his dark view of humanity. In Venice, more than ever, he seems a touching, lonely figure.  

But depth of character is not the point in this mystery. Of course Poirot eventually says, “No one shall leave until I find who killed her!” and later describes exactly who and what caused multiple deaths. His revelations are not especially surprising, though. As any mystery fan knows, the supposedly least likely suspect is often the killer, and the unsuspenseful Haunting in Venice doesn’t do much to undermine that guess.

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"A Haunting in Venice" is the best of Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot movies. It's also one of Branagh's best, period, thanks to the way Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green dismantle and reinvent the source material (Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party )  to create a relentlessly clever, visually dense "old" movie that uses the latest technology. 

Set mainly in a palazzo that seems as immense as Xanadu or Castle Elsinore (it's a blend of actual Venice locations, London soundstages, and visual effects), the movie is threaded with intimations of supernatural activity, most of the action occurs during a tremendous thunderstorm, and the violence pushes the PG-13 rating to its breaking point. It's fun with a dark streak: imagine a ghastly gothic cousin of " Clue ," or of something like Branagh's own " Dead Again ," which revolved around past lives. At the same time, amid the expected twists and gruesome murders, "A Haunting in Venice" is an empathetic portrayal of the death-haunted mentality of people from Branagh's parents' generation who came through World War II with psychic scars, wondering what had been won.  

The original Christie novel was published in 1969 and set in then-present-day Woodleigh Common, England. The adaptation transplants the story to Venice, sets it over 20 years earlier, gives it an international cast of characters thick with British expats, and retains just a few elements, including the violent death of a young girl in the recent past and the insinuating presence of an Agatha Christie-like crime novelist named Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), who takes credit for creating Poirot's reputation by making him a character in her writing. Aridane tracks down Poirot in a Venice apartment, where he's retired from detective work and seemingly in existential crisis (though one he'd never discuss without being asked). He seems resolved to a life of aloneness, which is not the same as loneliness. He tells Ariadne he doesn't have friends and doesn't need any. 

Ariadne's sales have slumped, so she draws Poirot back into sleuthing by pushing him to attend a Halloween Night seance at the aforementioned home, hoping to produce material that will give her another hit. The medium is a celebrity in her own right: Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ), a character named after the untrustworthy little girl in the original Christie story who claims to have witnessed a murder. Reynolds plans to communicate with a murder victim, Alicia Drake ( Rowan Robinson ), the teenage daughter of the palazzo's owner, former opera singer Rowena Drake ( Kelly Reilly ), and hopefully learn who did the deed.

There are, of course, many others gathered in the palazzo. All become suspects in Alicia's murder as well as the subsequent cover-up killings that ensue in these kinds of stories. Poirot locks himself and the rest of the ensemble in the palazzo and announces that no one can leave until he's figured things out. The gallery of possibles includes a wartime surgeon named Leslie Ferrier ( Jamie Dornan ) who suffers from severe PTSD; Ferrier's precocious son Leopold ( Jude Hill , the young lead in Branagh's " Belfast "), who is 12 going on 40 and asks unnerving questions; Rowena’s housekeeper Olga Seminoff ( Camille Cottin ); Maxime Gerard ( Kyle Allen ), Alicia’s former boyfriend; and Mrs. Reynolds’ assistants Desdemona and Nicholas Holland ( Emma Laird and Ali Khan ), war refugees who are half-siblings.

It would be unsporting to say much about the rest of the plot. Reading the book won't give anything important away because—even more so than in Branagh's previous Poirot films—the kinship between source and adaptation is a bit like the later James Bond films, which might take a title, some character names and locations, and one or two ideas, and invent everything else. Green, who also wrote the recent " Death on the Nile " as well as " Blade Runner 2049 " and much of the series "American Gods," is a reliably excellent screenwriter of fresh stories inspired by canonical material. His work keeps one eye on commerce and the other on art. He regularly reminds nostalgia-motivated viewers in the "intellectual property" era of why they like something. At the same time, he introduces provocative new elements and attempts a different tone or focus than audiences probably expected. (The introduction to the movie tie-in paperback of Christie's novel has an introduction by Green that starts with him confessing to a murder of "the book you are holding.")

Accordingly, this Poirot mystery aligns itself with popular culture made in Allied countries after World War II. Classic post-war English-language films like " The Best Years of Our Lives ," " The Third Man ," "The Fallen Idol," and mid-career Welles films like " Touch of Evil " and "The Trial" (to name just a few classics that Branagh seems keenly aware of) were not just engrossing, beautifully crafted entertainments, but illustrations of a pervasive collective feeling of moral exhaustion and soiled idealism—the result of living through a six-year period that showcased previously unimaginable horrors, including Stalingrad, Normandy, the mechanized extermination of the Holocaust, and the use of atomic bombs against civilians. And so the embittered Poirot is a seeming atheist who practically sneers at speaking to the dead. Green and Branagh even give him a monologue about his disillusionment that evokes comments made about Christie near the end of her life, and in the novel, about what she perceived as increasingly cruel tendencies in humanity as a whole, reflected in the sorts of crimes that were being committed.  

Aside from a few period-specific details and references, the source seems to exist outside of the time in which it was written. Branagh and Green's movie goes in the opposite direction. It's very much of  the late 1940s. The children in the film are orphans of war and post-war occupation (soldiers fathered some of them, then went back home without taking responsibility for their actions). There's talk of "battle fatigue," which is what PTSD was called during World War II; in the previous world war, they called it "shell shock." The plot hinges on the economic desperation of native citizens, previously moneyed expatriates who are too emotionally and often financially shattered to recapture the way of life they had before the war, and the mostly Eastern European refugees who didn't have much to start with and do the country's grunt work. The overriding sense is that some of these characters would literally kill to get back to being what they were.

Branagh was compared to Orson Welles early in his career for obvious reasons. He was a wunderkind talent who became internationally famous in his twenties and often starred in projects he originated and oversaw. He had one foot in theater and the other in film. He loved the classics (Shakespeare especially) and popular film genres (including musicals and horror). He had an impresario's sense of showmanship and the ego to go with it. He's never been more brazenly Wellesian than he is here. This film has a "big" feeling, as Welles' films always did, even when they were made for pocket change. But it's not full of itself, wasteful or pokey; like a Welles film, it gets in and out of every scene as fast as possible, and clocks in at 107 minutes, including credits. 

Film history aficionados may appreciate the many visual acknowledgments of the master's filmography, including ominous views of Venice that reference Welles' "Othello" and a screeching cockatoo straight out of " Citizen Kane ." At times, it feels as if Branagh conducted a seance and channeled Welles' spirit, as well as that of other directors who worked in a black-and-white, expressionistic, Gothic-flavored, very Wellesian style (including "The Third Man" director Carol Reed and "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Seven Days in May" director John Frankenheimer ). Branagh and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos have also mentioned Richard Brooks's 1967 adaptation of " In Cold Blood " and Masaki Kobayashi's "Kwaidan" as influences. The movie deploys fish-eye lenses, dutch tilts, hilariously ominous close-ups of significant objects (including a creepy cuckoo clock), extreme low- and high-angles, and deep-focus compositions that arrange the actors from foreground to deep background, with window and door frames, sections of furniture, and sometimes actors' bodies dicing up the shot to create additional frames-within-the-frame. 

Like post-millennial Michael Mann and Steven Soderbergh movies, "A Haunting in Venice" was shot digitally (albeit in IMAX resolution) and lets the medium be what it naturally is. The low-light interior scenes make no attempt to simulate film stock, depriving viewers of that "comfort food" feeling that comes from seeing a movie set in the past that uses actual film or tries for a "film look." The result is unbalancing, in a fascinating way. The images have a mesmerizing hyper-clarity and a shimmering, otherworldly aspect. In tight close-ups of actors, their eyes seem to have been lit from within.  

Branagh and editor Lucy Donaldson time the cuts so that the more ostentatious images (such as a rat crawling out of a stone gargoyle's mouth, and Poirot and Ariadne seen through the metal screen of a fireplace, flames in the foreground) are on-screen just long enough for the viewer to register what they see, and laugh at how far the movie is willing to go for the effect. Movies are rarely directed in this style anymore, in any format, and it's a shame, because when they are, the too-muchness can be intoxicating.

Available in theaters on September 15th. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, disturbing images and thematic elements.

104 minutes

Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot

Kyle Allen as Maxime Gerard

Camille Cottin as Olga Seminoff

Jamie Dornan as Dr Leslie Ferrier

Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver

Jude Hill as Leopold Ferrier

Ali Khan as Nicholas Holland

Emma Laird as Desdemona Holland

Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake

Michelle Yeoh as Joyce Reynolds

Dylan Corbett-Bader as Baker

Amir El-Masry as Alessandro Longo

Fernando Piloni as Vincenzo Di Stefano

• Kenneth Branagh

Writer (based upon the novel "Hallowe'en Party" by)

• Agatha Christie
• Michael Green

Cinematographer

• Haris Zambarloukos
• Lucy Donaldson
• Hildur Guðnadóttir

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Movie Reviews

The big twist in 'a haunting in venice' it's actually a great film.

Justin Chang

Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh join Kenneth Branagh in A Haunting in Venice. Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection hide caption

Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh join Kenneth Branagh in A Haunting in Venice.

You can always count on Agatha Christie for a surprise, and the big twist in A Haunting in Venice is that it's actually a pretty terrific movie.

I say this as a die-hard Christie fan who didn't much care for Kenneth Branagh 's earlier adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Charming as he was in the role of Hercule Poirot, the movies themselves felt like lavish but superfluous retreads of two of the author's best-known classics.

One of the lessons of A Haunting in Venice is that sometimes, it's a good idea to go with weaker source material. Christie's 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party is one of her thinner whodunits, and Branagh and his screenwriter, Michael Green, have smartly overhauled the story, which is now set in 1947 Venice. They've also gleefully embraced the Halloween theme, taking the cozy conventions of the detective story and pushing them in the direction of a full-blown haunted-house thriller.

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OK, so the result isn't exactly Don't Look Now , the most richly atmospheric horror movie ever shot in Venice. But Branagh and his collaborators, especially the cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos and the production designer John Paul Kelly, have clearly fallen under the spell of one of the world's most beautiful and cinematically striking cities. While there are the expectedly scenic shots of gondolas and canals at sunset, most of the action takes place after dark at a magnificent palazzo owned by a famed opera singer, played by Kelly Reilly.

She's hosting a lavish Halloween party, where Poirot is one of the guests, tagging along with his longtime American friend, Ariadne Oliver, a popular mystery novelist played with snappy wit by Tina Fey . Also in attendance are Jamie Dornan as a troubled doctor and an entrancing Michelle Yeoh as a medium, known as "the unholy Mrs. Reynolds," who says she can speak to the dead.

Case Closed: Agatha Christie's Detective Poirot Solves His Last TV Mystery

Mrs. Reynolds performs a séance, hoping to contact the spirit of the opera singer's daughter, who died under mysterious circumstances at the palazzo a year earlier. Soon another death will take place: One of the party guests turns up murdered, and while Poirot is officially retired, he decides to take on the case. He even asks his mystery-writer friend, Miss Oliver, to help him interview suspects, though not before first questioning her about her whereabouts at the time of the killing.

As Poirot, Branagh is clearly having so much fun wearing that enormous mustache and speaking in that droll French accent that it's been hard not to enjoy his company, even when the movies have been lackluster. For once, though, the case he's investigating is just as pleasurable to get lost in.

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It's an unusually spooky story: The palazzo, we find out early on, is rumored to be haunted by the vengeful ghosts of children who died there years ago during an outbreak of the plague. Branagh piles on the freaky visuals and jolting sound effects, to the point where even a supreme skeptic like Poirot begins to question what's going on. These horror elements may be unabashedly creaky and derivative, but they work because the movie embraces them to the hilt.

A Haunting in Venice sometimes feels closer to the work of Christie's undersung contemporary John Dickson Carr, whose brilliant detective stories often flirted with the possibility of the supernatural. That said, the actual solution to the mystery, while clever enough, isn't especially ingenious or complicated.

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What gives the story its deeper resonance is its potent sense of time and place. It's just two years after the end of World War II, and many of the suspects have witnessed unspeakable horrors. The medium, Mrs. Reynolds, was a nurse during the war, which may account for why she feels such an affinity for the dead. Everyone, from the grieving opera singer to the doctor traumatized by his memories, seems to be mourning some kind of loss.

In Branagh's retelling, Poirot is himself a World War I veteran. One of the reasons he's such a staunch atheist is that he's seen too much cruelty and suffering to believe that God exists. He doesn't exactly change his mind by the end of A Haunting in Venice . But it's a testament to this movie's poignancy that Poirot emerges from his retirement with a renewed belief that he can still do some good in the world. He's eagerly looking forward to his next case, and so, to my delight, am I.

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A Haunting in Venice

In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once a... Read all In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer. In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer.

• Kenneth Branagh
• Michael Green
• Agatha Christie
• Michelle Yeoh
• Jamie Dornan
• 481 User reviews
• 246 Critic reviews
• 63 Metascore
• 5 wins & 5 nominations

• Hercule Poirot

• Joyce Reynolds

• Dr Leslie Ferrier

• Ariadne Oliver

• Alessandro Longo

• Vitale Portfoglio

• Vincenzo Di Stefano

• Puppet Show MC

• Olga Seminoff

• Rowena Drake

• Leopold Ferrier
• Child (Cookie Gobbler)
• Child (Crying Girl)

• Alicia Drake

• Desdemona Holland

• Child (Staircase 1)
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

All About 'A Haunting in Venice'

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• Trivia Sir Kenneth Branagh worked with the technical department to cause surprises for the cast. The actors were not warned about lights going out suddenly, or gusts of wind and slamming doors on the sets in which they worked, causing genuine confused and startled reactions from the actors to appear in the film. Kelly Reilly confirmed that filming the seance scene was a terrifying experience saying in an interview, "It scared the bejesus out of me."
• Goofs Shortly after the first seance, one of the two assistants is seen picking up two hurricane lamps (whch were still alight) by holding them at their tops. Something that would be impossible to do unless you had burn proof hands.

Ariadne Oliver : Scary stories make real life a little less scary

• Connections Featured in The Project: Episode dated 22 September 2023 (2023)
• Soundtracks When the Lights Go on Again Written by Bennie Benjamin , Sol Marcus and Eddie Seiler Performed by Vera Lynn Courtesy of Decca Music Group Limited Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 481

• Sep 16, 2023
• How long is A Haunting in Venice? Powered by Alexa
• September 15, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• 20thcenturystudios
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• Án Mạng Ở Venice
• Campiello dei Miracoli, Campo Santa Maria Nova, Venezia, Italy
• 20th Century Studios
• Kinberg Genre
• Scott Free Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $60,000,000 (estimated)
• $42,471,412
• $14,279,529
• Sep 17, 2023
• $122,290,456

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 43 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• IMAX 6-Track

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A Haunting in Venice review – Branagh improves on his Agatha Christie formula

With smart casting and suitably murky Venice setting, the director improves on last year’s Death on the Nile, though his moustache-fondling Poirot remains the same

T he contrast between Kenneth Branagh’s latest Poirot adventure, the enjoyably spooky mystery A Haunting in Venice , and the synthetic fakery of the previous instalment, Death on the Nile , could be used as a case study of the power of casting to make or break a movie. The essential ingredients are the same: Agatha Christie source material; the timeworn formula of a murder or two in an impossibly lavish location, followed by a whole mess of conflicting motivations to untangle. Branagh brings exactly the same degree of prissy, moustache-fondling affectation to his performance as the Belgian master detective. But this time he smartly casts actors who are able to disappear into their characters – Tina Fey, with her staccato, typewriter line delivery as crime novelist Ariadne Oliver; Kelly Reilly’s silky, luxuriant sadness as celebrated singer Rowena Drake. Compare that with Nile’s distractingly starry cast of actors self-consciously wearing their roles: garish fancy dress costumes rather than characters.

Another plus is the atmospheric Venice backdrop, its murky, swirling waters hinting at dark secrets that accumulate over centuries, like barnacles clinging doggedly to the buildings; its extravagant beauty framed slightly off-kilter. The story itself is fairly formulaic: Poirot is tempted by the opportunity to debunk Michelle Yeoh’s society medium at a Halloween seance, but soon finds himself sock-suspender-deep in bodies. It’s enjoyable, if familiar. A special mention should go to Jude Hill, the child actor who played Branagh’s younger self in Belfast and here shows impressive range with a deliciously unsettling turn as Leopold, the son of a shell-shocked and half-broken father.

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‘A Haunting in Venice’ Review: A Whodunit With a Splash of Horror

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in this adaptation of a ghostly mystery from Agatha Christie, with assists from Michelle Yeoh and Tina Fey.

By Jason Zinoman

What genre does “A Haunting in Venice” belong to?

Twirl a mustache and join me on the case. Our first clue is that Kenneth Branagh is playing Hercule Poirot in his third adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. So, this would appear to be an open-and-shut case. Add a murder in a spooky house peopled by suspects, and you have all the hallmarks of a classic locked-room mystery. But Christie fans will quickly deduce that the screenwriter Michael Green has departed considerably from “Hallowe’en Party,” the original source material from 1969, one of her later, lesser books, adding elements that move into the realm of supernatural horror. Be on guard for misdirection.

A glum Poirot, retired from solving cases, has been invited to attend a séance where a famous opera singer, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), wants to contact her dead daughter. The medium (or fraud?) is played with brio by Michelle Yeoh, and her psychic powers present a challenge to the stony rationality of the aging detective. Unlike his relatively faithful, innocuously entertaining versions of “ Murder on the Orient Express ” and “ Death on the Nile ,” Branagh is pushing into ghostly new territory, leaning on scary-movie tropes such as scurrying rats, jump scares and that old standby, a face popping up in the mirror.

It’s a bit gloomy as a mystery, but perfunctory as horror. Too talky, for one thing. Branagh, who dabbled in gothic terror early in his career when he made “Frankenstein,” has more of a feel for actorly grand guignol than the pace of cinematic-scare sequences. Just when you are about to return to the whodunit, there’s an invigorating twist, spurred largely by the presence of Tina Fey, who, between this movie and her wryly satirical flourishes as an opportunistic podcaster in the series “Only Murders in the Building,” is getting awfully skilled at playing a potential killer. Fey here embodies the sharp-tongued Ariadne Oliver, a mystery author with a screwball cadence, touchy about her critical reception.

Fey introduces a comedic energy into the movie, talking out of the side of her mouth while accompanying Poirot. She adds some much-needed fizzy carbonation to the stiff drink of mystery solving. Branagh wants to tell a story of a shaken, brooding Poirot struggling with decline, but luckily, camp humor intrudes. When he aims his preposterous accent at the French actress Camille Cottin, who plays a housekeeper, it makes you think a good time was had on set.

In straddling genres, “Haunting” can get stuck in the middle. But there’s fun to be had there. What’s consistent is the elegant visuals — striking cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos — which mark this movie’s real genre as lavish old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment. Canted views of surprising corners of the house alternate with postcard-stunning shots of rainy Venetian nights. But the dominant images are close-ups of movie stars, including long, lingering glances at Branagh, whose whispery gravitas provides good, if melancholy, company and occasional wit.

In the original book, Poirot ponders the subject of beauty. He sounds skeptical and a bit insecure. “There was only one thing about his own appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot,” Christie writes, “and that was the profusion of his mustache.”

Branagh remained entirely faithful on this trait. But he couldn’t help but add a soul patch.

A Haunting in Venice Rated PG-13 for dangerous apple-bobbing and death by impalement. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the French actress in “A Haunting in Venice.” Her name is Camille Cottin, not Cotton.

How we handle corrections

Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for The Times. As the paper’s first comedy critic, he has written the On Comedy column since 2011. More about Jason Zinoman

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‘A Haunting in Venice’ Review: A Supernatural Twist Can’t Energize Kenneth Branagh’s Lethargic Hercule Poirot

Christian zilko.

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The whodunnit genre has been on a hell of a run since “Knives Out” hit theaters in 2019. Rian Johnson’s witty, socially conscious murder mystery became an electrifying cultural phenomenon — and reminded a cinematic universe-loving Hollywood that a repeatable formula involving rotating ensemble casts and picturesque settings could be great for business. But America’s fascination with the twisty adventures of Benoit Blanc makes it easy to forget that there’s been another studio-backed whodunnit franchise at the multiplexes for the past half-decade.

Branagh launched his series with Christie’s most obvious starting points, kicking things off with her best-selling “Orient Express” before adapting her beloved “Death on the Nile” (which came with a campy hook about a cruise ship carrying enough champagne to fill the eponymous river). But while Christie’s massive bibliography contains enough quality mysteries to fill several lifetimes of filmmaking, there wasn’t a third novel with comparable obvious name recognition. So Branagh got creative for his third film , taking Christie’s Gothic-tinged mystery “Hallowe’en Party” and moving the setting from England to Italy to make “ A Haunting in Venice .”

Without the intellectual stimulation of solving crimes, he has to find other ways to keep his brain sharp. When his old friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a mystery novelist whose knack for puzzles rivals his own, invites him to a Halloween party to help her expose a grifting psychic, he soon finds himself attending a post-soiree seance at a Gothic manor that has been the site of unimaginable tragedies. The party’s hosts have spent years grieving the suicide of their young daughter, who fell to her death from one of the tower’s highest windows. The unexpected death tore the extended family apart, prompting brutal divorces and crippling mental health problems for her father.

It’s unsurprising that the parents have taken comfort in “communicating” with their late daughter through the psychic communications of alleged medium Joyce Reynolds (a predictably stylish Michelle Yeoh). But it doesn’t take long for Poirot to spot an assistant hiding in the chimney and expose her act as a fraud. The aging detective takes the opportunity to soliloquize about his distaste for psychics who prey on vulnerable people for money and state his disbelief in supernatural events.

If the night had ended there, Poirot could have simply returned to his serene retirement. But when he sneaks away to practice his bobbing for apples skills, an unidentified assailant attacks him from behind and nearly kills him. With his own safety in mind, Poirot locks down the premises and sets out to find the would-be killer in the room — but his night of methodical questioning soon becomes derailed by ghostly occurrences that call his unshakeable belief in science and reason into question.

Despite the franchises’ obvious differences, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the shadow that the “Knives Out” movies cast over Branagh’s self-described “Christie-verse.” While you certainly can’t hate a movie for differing from an unrelated director’s vision, stuffy adaptations like “A Haunting in Venice” seem even stuffier when Johnson is constantly reminding us how much of the genre’s uncharted territory is waiting to be explored.

The biggest selling point for Branagh’s Poirot movies has always been his clear passion for the source material and willingness to let Christie’s thrilling stories to stand on their own. But his slick Hollywood adaptations keep getting stuck in a purgatory that offers neither the excitement of the “Knives Out” movies nor the dry English charm of the original BBC Hercule Poirot specials. Perhaps the public service aspect of briefly returning some of Christie’s best works to the zeitgeist (and hopefully pointing some new readers towards her vast library) is sufficient justification for the series’ mediocrity. But if Branagh thinks he’s making a significant contribution to her cinematic legacy, it might be time to mercifully euthanize the franchise with an adaptation of “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case.”

“A Haunting in Venice” opens in theaters on Friday, September 15.

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A Haunting in Venice review: Kenneth Branagh scares up his best Poirot film yet

Branagh portrays Agatha Christie's favorite detective for the third time in this supernatural thriller.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

While Kenneth Branagh 's first two outings as Agatha Christie detective Hercule Poirot were classic murder mysteries, A Haunting in Venice is, as its name suggests, most decidedly a ghost story.

The slight shift in tone and genre, leaning into the supernatural elements of the storytelling, does wonders for Branagh's take on Poirot, elevating the movie beyond the solid, if somewhat bland entertainment of the first two films. Additionally, while Branagh tackled two of Christie's most famous works in his initial efforts, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile , the lesser-known 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party serves as the source material this time, with screenwriter Michael Green diverging even further from the original story. The result is something altogether more inventive, surprising, and engaging.

Poirot — played again by Branagh, with his thick Belgian accent and piercing blue eyes that seem to discern all wrongdoing — has gone into retirement, holing up in Venice and refusing to take another case. As such, he takes a bit of a backseat to the action, which leaves him to do what he does best: solve murders. There's no pesky, overwrought backstory here, no mustache origin stories. Instead, Branagh inhabits Poirot with an affection and lived-in-ness befitting of his third go with a character he can now don like a favorite sweater.

When an old acquaintance, mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), visits Poirot, she invites him to attend a Halloween party and seance at the Palazzo of famed opera singer Rowena Drake ( Kelly Reilly ). Some months prior, Rowena's daughter, Alicia (Rowan Robinson), committed suicide by jumping from the balcony into the canal below. Desperate to hear her daughter's voice, Rowena recruits famed medium Mrs. Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ) to contact Alicia's spirit. But when the evening goes drastically wrong, the ensemble — which includes housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), shell-shocked doctor Leslie Ferrier ( Jamie Dornan ), his precocious son Leopold ( Belfast's Jude Hill), and Reynolds' assistant Desdemona (Emma Laird) — find themselves locked in a house that boasts all manner of horrors.

Branagh, teaming with cinematographer and frequent collaborator Haris Zambarloukos, transforms the Palazzo into an off-kilter haunted house and relies on canted angles to indicate the unbalanced state of Poirot's mind. While Orient Express and Nile were designed to showcase the opulence of their settings, here Zambarloukos is much more inventive with his shot set-ups, using fish-eye lenses, tilted frames, darkness, shadow, and severe high and low angles to thrust the audience into this unsettling world.

Poirot and, by extension, the audience are never quite sure whether what they're seeing is real or not — and much of the film is built upon the legacy of ghost stories and how and why we choose to believe them. The design, from the cinematography to the art direction, enhance this sense of supernatural unease. We trust Poirot to have an explanation for everything, but what happens when he simply does not? That's the question at the heart of the action, a ghostly war between Poirot's reliance on deduction and logic and the far more human, irrational foibles of loss, greed, obsession, and the unexplainable.

Branagh leads a strong ensemble here. Yeoh is satisfyingly mercenary and chilling as Ms. Reynolds, toeing the line between canny businesswoman and purveyor of spiritualism in a way that keeps us guessing. While Cottin, largely unknown to American audiences, is inscrutable in the best way, her stern exterior belying her kindly heart.

Fey offers some of her strongest work in years. Generally, she plays a heightened version of herself, but here she is a heavily fictionalized play on Christie, a mystery novelist responsible for Poirot's fame. As Oliver, she is spritely, a tad vain, and a mercurial presence that keeps Poirot and the audience on their toes. At first glance, Fey seems an odd fit for a period piece; she's so firmly associated with a specific brand of modern comedy. But she sinks into the world with gusto, complete with a believable, delightful transatlantic accent.

Dornan, who Branagh featured so exquisitely in Belfast, is a bit underused here as a doctor coming apart at the seams. But his chemistry with Hill, who reprises the father-son relationship with Dornan after Belfast , is perfection — and Hill continues to grow as a natural actor who pulls your eye straight to him in every scene. Branagh has found a real talent in the young performer and continues to mold him admirably.

Perhaps what is most satisfying about A Haunting in Venice is the ways in which it continually surprises. Where the previous Christie adaptations felt by the book, Venice startles at every turn and isn't afraid of jump scares and genuine moments of horror. It is more mystery or thriller than scary movie — and it effectively takes up the themes of the greatest mystery writers, the ways in which grief, trauma, and loss defy even the most rational of brains. The most frightening thing of all isn't the prospect of ghosts, but the ways in which our choices and our pasts haunt us more effectively than any supernatural specter could.

Amidst all this, Venice is also just a heck of a lot of fun, from its eerie Venetian mask costumes to the intriguing ways in which its central mysteries unfold. With heaps of atmosphere and a general spookiness, it's the perfect choice for a Halloween party. Grade: B

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'A Haunting in Venice' review: A sleepy Agatha Christie movie that won't keep you up at night

Another Agatha Christie movie, another old-school whodunit that doesn’t measure up to Kenneth Branagh’s amazing mustache .

“A Haunting in Venice” (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; streaming now on Hulu ), Branagh’s third go-round as ace Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot (and third time manning the director’s chair), is only marginally better than the previous two stale outings, 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and last year’s “ Death on the Nile .” For his newest starry murder mystery , based on Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” Branagh challenges Poirot’s deductive mind and supernatural belief system and surrounds him with spookiness that can only spiff up a creaky plot and thin characters so much.

Set in 1947 – 10 years after “Nile” if anyone’s counting – this tale finds Poirot retired and living in Venice, Italy. After a career of seeing the worst of humanity while solving murders and witnessing the horrors of war, the ex-detective is content gardening, hiding from potential clients and waiting for his pastry delivery (like a post-war Postmates).

Who's the murderer? The biggest changes between the book and movie 'A Haunting in Venice'

“Cakes for cases,” Poirot’s friend Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ) teases him when she comes to visit. The world’s top mystery writer is in Venice to attend a Halloween seance held at a supposedly haunted palazzo, which was once an orphanage but is now said to house the spirits of tortured children.

The palazzo's owner is opera star Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a soprano who hasn’t sung a note since her ill daughter Alicia suffered a broken engagement and bizarrely took a header into a nearby canal, and she’s hired renowned psychic Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ) to hold a gathering to communicate with the dearly departed.

Knowing Poirot will think all this is hooey, Ariadne convinces him to come along and debunk the “Unholy” Mrs. Reynolds as a charlatan. But a long and twisty night kicks off in murderous fashion: One of the guests winds up dead, the survivors are trapped by a nasty storm, and Poirot gets back to what he does best, though our hero is thrown off his game when he starts to see and hear strange things.

An intriguing lot rounds out the suspect list, including “Belfast” co-stars Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill as a doctor suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and his clever son, Kyle Allen (“West Side Story”) as Alicia’s ex-fiancé and Camille Cottin (“Stillwater”) as Rowena’s loyal housekeeper. Fey’s Ariadne is the only supporting player that really pops, as a wry foil to the reserved Poirot. The detective himself gets another decent fleshing-out from what Christie had on the page courtesy of Michael Green’s screenplay, which takes more freedom with the source material than "Orient Express" and "Nile" did with their better-known tomes.

Like Branagh’s previous mysteries, “Venice” is awfully nice to look at and Oscar-winning "Joker" composer Hildur Gudnadøttir's darkly classical score sets a pleasingly creepy vibe alongside masked Italian gondoliers and costumed kids. Yet aside from Yeoh’s character and the occasional odd figure in a mirror, it’s not nearly as scary as it should or could be – the family-friendly “Haunted Mansion” is more unsettling, honestly – and the narrative is a grind to get through before Poirot finally reveals all.

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The main problem with these throwback Christie adaptations is that, while sufficiently stylish and serviceable, they just don’t have the infectious, go-for-broke energy of a “Knives Out” movie or even a more relatable version of a classic literary sleuthing type like the “Sherlock” TV series. Multiple bodies drop dead, Poirot’s facial hair is still on point, but “Haunting” can’t exorcise ghosts of the past enough for a thrilling case.

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Kenneth Branagh Needs to Make 10 More of These

Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot mysteries haven’t exactly set the film world on fire, so the fact that the director-star continues to make them clearly speaks to his love for these stories and this character. In last year’s Death on the Nile , that affection translated onscreen to the movie’s florid, breathless stylization, as if Branagh were trying to shake us into an appreciation of the old Agatha Christie warhorse. In the latest, A Haunting in Venice , he forsakes the swooping cameras and epic vistas and frantic pacing for something stranger, more insular, and maybe even more refined. He takes Agatha Christie’s little-discussed 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party and turns it into a moody, staccato thriller about the unknown.

Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green have taken quite a few liberties with Christie’s original. Not only have they transposed the story to Venice in the year 1947, they’ve also brought in a supernatural undercurrent. On a practical level, this allows A Haunting in Venice to become more of a ghost story and a haunted house tale, with a wealth of jump scares meant presumably to broaden the picture’s appeal. But on a thematic level, it also makes Poirot more intriguing. When we meet him in this movie, he’s given up investigating crimes, having settled into a mopey retirement in Venice, his sole companion the ex-cop-turned-bodyguard, Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio), whom he pays to toss anybody trying to solicit his services into the lagoon. We don’t know exactly what’s happened to Poirot’s mojo, but the postwar setting and references throughout the film to combat trauma provide more than a few hints.

The famed detective is aroused from his spiritual slumber by Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a best-selling crime-fiction novelist and old friend, who invites him to a séance at a local palazzo being conducted by the elegant and mysterious Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), a medium whom the usually cynical Ariadne feels may well be the real thing. For Poirot, his refusal to believe in matters of the spirit isn’t just due to his devotion to science, reason, and observable fact; it’s also a measure of his brokenness. “If there is a ghost, there is a soul,” he says. “If there is a soul, there is a god who made it.” This then implies the existence of hope and a pattern to the world, something his experiences have told him does not — cannot — exist.

It’s not long after the séance starts that Poirot unmasks Reynolds as a fraud, revealing that she has assistants hidden inside the house helping create supposedly paranormal effects. (I’m not giving anything away here — we’re still in the set-up.) But then the fun starts. The palazzo they’re in is a legendary one, a former orphanage reportedly haunted by the many children who died there, whose ghosts have been known to exact “the children’s vendetta,” usually denoted by a series of mysterious scratches appearing on the body of the victim. Uncovering Ms. Reynolds’s ruse, it appears, does not stop the many bizarre occurrences in this place. Nor does it stop the grisly, unexplained killings.

In Death on the Nile , Branagh and Green breezed through the primary murder and the many incidents around it (including the ultimate explanation) as if these were the least of their narrative concerns. They do something similar here. They’ve substantially pared down the dramatis personae from Christie’s original, and they’ve also changed the nature of the central crime and its surrounding scenarios. But beyond that, they seem more interested in the dialogue Poirot carries on with Ariadne (and himself) about the nature of belief and the unknown. Poirot sees visions of ghosts, cloaked children hiding behind walls and spectral figures showing up suddenly, so much so that you might occasionally wonder if you’ve accidentally stepped into another Conjuring sequel.

Such genre affectations aren’t all that effective — Branagh is ultimately too playful and goofy a director to pull off a proper jump scare — but the movie’s enduring sense of quiet is unusually effective. This is an eerily silent work, full of long pauses and distant, baffling sounds; even the score seems to be mixed low, as if it were drifting through a window, a dark memory. Branagh also plays with the rhythm, using pace and composition to set us ill at ease. Vast stretches of darkness in the frame are cut through with shocks of color. He shoots with aggressive canted angles and absurd fisheye lenses, then switches to elegant establishing shots, sometimes with surprisingly jagged cuts. At one point, he body-mounts the camera on himself and then follows Poirot into a darkened chamber.

In short, he throws every technical trick in the book at us, like a precocious student just discovering the possibilities of the medium. It’s dorky, but endearing, a throwback to Branagh’s early years as a filmmaker, when his cameras worked overtime to revitalize Shakespeare for the screen. And it succeeds more often than not. Thanks to all this disorienting style, we never quite know what we’re looking at, or what to expect. One wide angle of a dead character’s room looks like the ceiling is slowly taking over the walls. Shadowy figures — statues, sculptures, lamps? — loom in backgrounds, sometimes draped in ominous sheets, peering through the darkness like ghosts.

Film series, especially moderately successful ones, rarely get more interesting or inventive as they proceed. Peter Ustinov’s Hercule Poirot mysteries back in the late 1970s and ’80s started with the spectacle of Death on the Nile and eventually became TV movies, unvarnished and kind of dull. Branagh’s Christie adaptations started off looking like yet another attempt to stay relevant in an industry now completely dominated by franchises, and maybe they are. But they’re also mutating, becoming more offbeat as they continue. A Haunting in Venice is far from perfect, but it feels like the work of a man rejuvenated, determined to use the detective-thriller template to keep trying, teasing out the personal and weird, and tossing new ideas at the wall and seeing what works. I hope he makes ten more of these.

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Why Agatha Christie’s mousetraps still beguile us, even if the films aren’t always killer

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After two relatively faithful adaptation s of Agatha Christie ’ s “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Death on the Nile,” director-star Kenneth Branagh goes wildly off - book with “A Haunting in Venice,” which arrives in theaters Friday . Once again playing Christie’s most famous character, the Belgian ex-police inspector turned private detective Hercule Poirot, Branagh shoots largely on location , specifically in a moldering palazzo said to be haunted by orphans left to die during a cholera outbreak. Coaxed out of retirement by his friend, the crime novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), Poirot sets out to debunk a famed medium (Michelle Yeoh) and winds up having something of an existential crisis along the way.

Times culture critic Mary McNamara and film critic Justin Chang, both self-described Christie nerds, have more than a few things to say about the results.

MARY McNAMARA: The biggest mystery of “A Haunting in Venice” is, of course, why it bothers to claim to be based on the 1969 Christie novel “Hallowe’en Party.” Both take place during Halloween, both include Poirot, Ariadne Oliver and many references to apples (of which Mrs. Oliver — here “Miss” — is notoriously fond), and both share a few character names as well as a brief reference to a previous case.

Other than that, though, niente .

There is not only no Christie novel called “A Haunting in Venice,” there is no Christie novel set in Venice. Poirot preferred to vacation on the French Riviera and British seaside and the one time he did officially attempt to retire (“The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”), it was to grow vegetable marrows in a British village.

In “Hallowe’en Party,” a 13-year-old girl is murdered at a village fete after claiming that she once witnessed a murder. Other deaths ensue before Poirot solves the crimes, and though the novel has one of Christie’s more fantastic endings, no ghosts or ghoulies are involved at any point. Which is a long-winded way of saying anyone looking for a cinematic adaptation that is even vaguely recognizable as “Hallowe’en Party” would be better served by watching the “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” British TV version, starring the great David Suchet .

But having seen the decidedly spooky trailer and the two previous films, I knew this going in. From the moment Poirot set foot on the Orient Express and certainly as he set sail down the Nile, Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green have been deeply committed to making the world’s second most adapted literary detective another man entirely.

Where Christie’s Poirot was occasionally irritated (by bad food, asymmetrical mantel decor and his own miscalculations), Branagh’s Poirot is perpetually in a state of mourning. Still brilliantly observant, obsessively neat and elaborately mustachioed, his version bears psychic wounds from his service in World War I and the subsequent death of his true love Katherine. (It was she who suggested he grow a mustache to cover the scars he received in the trenches.)

When this outrageous and, frankly, heretical love-and-mustache backstory was introduced in “Death on the Nile,” I almost threw my popcorn at the screen. Mercifully, the rest of the film was so bad for so many reasons, I quickly moved on to groaning about other things.

But I am a sucker for any movie shot in Venice. Also I was curious see how far Green and Branagh would go — would some dear departed Poirot child appear? Would he find love with Mrs., er, Miss Oliver? Would I run screaming from the theater, if not in fright then in fury?

Mais non, mon ami Chang. (Sorry.) Having accepted this haunted version of Poirot, and the fact that it would bear no resemblance to any Christie story I have ever read, I actually quite liked “A Haunting in Venice.” It was spectacularly spooky and, though I guessed the main plot twist early on, quite entertaining. What did you think, Justin?

JUSTIN CHANG: I’m with you, Mary. While I don’t love that title — I’d have much preferred something like “Venice the Menace” or “Venice, Anyone?” or “Gondola With the Wind” or “Catch Me If You Canal” — there’s only so much one can protest about a movie set and shot in the world’s most jaw-droppingly beautiful city, especially when it makes room for “The Grudge” -style jump scares and a screaming, gyrating, temporarily demon-possessed Michelle Yeoh. Oh, and speaking of heresy: While Christie certainly wrote her share of gruesome murders, I can’t recall any offhand in which the victim falls several stories and gets impaled on a sharp spike. What was the inspiration for this, Michael Bay’s “The Rock” ? (I’m not complaining, just wondering.)

I’ll have more to say in my review of “A Haunting in Venice,” but as someone who also disliked the earlier Branagh–Poirot movies, I too was more charmed than irked by Green’s many departures from the source material this time around.

I’m generally a defender of irreverent, flagrantly unfaithful adaptations, especially when the book in question isn’t memorable to begin with. Unlike “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Death on the Nile,” both frequently and capably filmed before, “Hallowe’en Party” isn’t a great or even good mystery. I remember finding it one of the more tedious and thinly plotted of the 80 or so Christies I plowed through decades ago, though since I know you’re a fan, Mary, I’m open to giving it another look.

Branagh remains marvelous as Christie’s most famous sleuth, though like you, Mary, I’ve expressed my share of frustration with these movies’ insistence on giving us Emo Poirot, Lovelorn Poirot and Existentially Tormented War Veteran Poirot. (There’s mercifully less of that in “A Haunting in Venice,” though I can’t say that Atheist Poirot, bent on using reason to take down Yeoh’s faith-peddling medium, is any less of a cliché.) The attempt to turn Poirot into a plausible romantic lead, or at least to suggest a backstory awash in thwarted passion, has always slightly felt designed to flatter Branagh’s ego — and also to deepen and humanize a character often reduced to the sum of his attributes and mannerisms: the mustache, the egg-shaped head, the “little gray cells of the mind.”

Christie famously grew tired of Poirot herself, and often resented him for being more of a reader favorite than her other great sleuth, Miss Marple. There’s a reason (four-decade-old spoiler alert!) she killed off Poirot in “Curtain” but ensured that Miss Marple survived her last case, “Sleeping Murder.” (Christie even subjected herself and Poirot to some sly self-parody by giving Mrs. Oliver an annoyingly popular sleuth of her own, a Finn by the name of Sven Hjerson.) But I’ll confess that Poirot is, by several crime-scene chalk outlines, my favorite fictional detective, and while I’m not in love with Branagh’s big-screen revival, I can’t help but look forward to the next one.

Mary, what are some of your favorite Christie novels, or, if that’s too hard to narrow down, which ones would you like to see Branagh (or someone else) adapt next?

McNAMARA: I do hope Green and Branagh give us another, and I nominate “Mrs. McGinty’s Dead,” if only so Fey can return as Miss Oliver (the original being an obvious avatar for Christie), and have a conniption over a young playwright’s attempt to make Sven younger, less eccentric and more magnetic to women. It’s highly meta and precisely what Christie did when similar changes to Poirot were suggested for the first stage adaptation of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” Though, to be fair, neither Green nor Branagh appear interested in winking at the audience.

I confess it was more than a little jarring to see my beloved scatterbrained Mrs. Oliver turned into Fey’s stylish, fast-talking writer on the make. But the steely-eyed, tart-tongued version was a natural match for mournful Poirot, and Fey provided more than a few delightful moments.

It’s impossible for me to name a favorite Christie novel, but thinking cinematically, “Elephants Can Remember” (also with Mrs. Oliver) could work. “Evil Under the Sun” has been popular with Hollywood; “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas” would be a great holiday film; and I know you are a big fan of “Five Little Pigs,” Justin.

CHANG: While there has already been a Suchet-starring TV adaptation, I would love to see a big-screen version of “Five Little Pigs,” of which the late crime novelist and Christie scholar Robert Barnard once wrote, “The present writer would be willing to chance his arm and say that this is the best Christie of all.” I don’t know if I’d chance my arm, but I know the novel is an absolute masterpiece — not only one of the most beautifully plotted of Poirot whodunits, but also by no small margin the most beautifully written.

“Five Little Pigs” is an unusually melancholy story, partly because the mystery is set in the past (the book was published in the U.S. under the title “Murder in Retrospect”), and partly because most of the suspects — the “five little pigs” of the title — are members of a family that has clearly never made peace with this tragedy. Poirot’s investigation, undertaken through a fog of unreliable witness accounts, brings all manner of forgotten memories and half-buried resentments to the surface. The skill of Christie‘s sleight-of-hand is matched by a rare depth of characterization and a sense of tragic futility that lingers in a way few of her mysteries do.

Branagh would be great starring in it (and Emo Poirot would actually be welcome in this instance), though someone else should direct. Weirdly, Florian Zeller, with his gift for dramas about memory and family tragedy ( “The Father,” “The Son” ), comes to mind.

McNAMARA: I think I’ll stick with “Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.” It has a grisly if mundane murder that broadens into some very creepy plot twists (famous child murderers!), with a side of the always-popular media bashing. It also forces Poirot to stay in a very uncomfortable guest house, good for laughs, which is run by the chronically overwhelmed Maureen Summerhayes, who could easily be made into an age-appropriate widow/potential love interest. And considering Green and Branagh’s penchant for dramatic atmosphere, the story would work just as well in the Scottish Highlands, Ireland’s County Mayo or some other place of sweeping vistas and towering crags. (Copyright mine.)

But honestly, given “Haunting’s” complete disregard for everything except the most essential original content, there’s no telling. They could choose to do what so many fans longed for and have Poirot finally meet Miss Marple. Which might be nice; she could just twinkle at him over the fluffy jumper she was knitting and tell him how he reminded her of that young actor she once saw in “Henry V” who, scandalously, left his first wife for a lovely actress but eventually pulled himself together.

What would you think of a throwdown with Miss Marple? Or would you prefer Poirot bump into the mysterious Mr. Quin?

CHANG: So long as they don’t have him encounter Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, who, all due respect, have always bored me to tears. Otherwise, I’ll be just fine with whatever they cook up next. Like you, Mary, I didn’t mind Fey’s tart-tongued take on Mrs. Oliver, however textually inaccurate she may be. As it happens, I went into “A Haunting in Venice” completely cold and, as a big Fey fan, was delighted to see her pop up in such a prominent role.

That said, yes, I would be all for “Poirot v Marple: Dawn of Justice,” provided they find the right actor to play Miss Marple. Maybe not Emma Thompson (bad joke, I know, but your reference to “Henry V” and first wives raises fascinating possibilities). It’s not an easy task, given all the great Miss Marples played by Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury, Joan Hickson and Geraldine McEwan, though I’m of the general opinion that one can never go wrong with Imelda Staunton. The question, of course, is who would solve the mystery first, Poirot or Marple? Perhaps they experience their “Eureka!” moments simultaneously, and then take turns explaining it to the rest of us.

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Feb. 11, 2022

McNAMARA: I love Poirot, but Miss Marple, who got far fewer novels and stories, always seemed to me the more significant literary creation.

Poirot, like Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin before him, was a professional detective. His accent and dandified appearance may have lulled people into telling him things they would not disclose to police, but Jane Marple was (and still is, alas) society’s definition of non-threatening: a highly genteel elderly lady, often misidentified as a gossip. But the understanding of human nature she cultivated in a lifetime of being overlooked is precisely what allows her to see what others could not.

She also had, in her own words, a mind “like a Victorian sink” — she always suspected the worst and was often proven correct. TV’s “House” may have been based on Holmes but his credo, “Everybody lies,” is pure Marple. Christie may not have invented the non-professional detective, but Miss Marple remains a template for the amateur sleuth.

You could argue that Dorothy L. Sayers, writing at the same time as early Christie, also contributed to the sub-genre with her creation Lord Peter Wimsey, who often went incognito as a “silly ass.” Sayers had her own insightful elderly “spinster,” Katherine Climpson, employed by Wimsey exactly because no one thought it odd that an older woman would be nosy. And in the character of Harriet Vane, Sayers also conjured a mystery writer much like herself, before Mrs. Oliver appeared, and in a far more directly romantic context.

Sayers and others may have been better novelists, but Christie’s palette was uniquely vast and surprisingly fearless — from deeply domestic village murders to international conspiracies, often designed to remind us that the threat of fascism is always with us. Over and over , Christie persuaded us that no matter how clever a murderer was, no matter how unlikely the truth turned out to be, justice would eventually prevail. Which is probably why some of us read her religiously.

Sorry (she said, stepping off her soapbox), this has wandered quite a bit from “A Haunting in Venice.” Though maybe not: Fey’s Miss Oliver had a neat little speech about why mystery novels remain popular that I quietly applauded. Why are you such a devout fan of the genre, Justin?

CHANG: Mary, your point about justice prevailing reminds me of the work of P.D. James, one of my favorite mystery novelists (and novelists period). She wrote extensively about the pleasures and satisfactions of the detective story, which in her mind are predicated on a problem that is “solved, not by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order restored from communal or personal disruption and chaos.”

If that sounds cozily reassuring, James nonetheless knew that the restoration of order is not always inevitable, and she turned that into a major source of tension in her work. In the complexity of her characterizations, the psychological acuity of her writing, she balanced our desire for order with a deep understanding of how cruel and unjust the world can be. Unsurprisingly, James didn’t think much of Christie and often resented being compared to her. She disdained Christie for reducing murder to a parlor trick, with her narrative formulas and cipher-like characters.

I know what she means, really I do. I love the literary heft and somber realism of James’ work. But I approach Christie’s work in a very different spirit, and if I’m honest, Mary, I do love a good parlor trick. I love being hoodwinked, led up the garden path, dazzled by red herrings and then awed into submission by an ingenious finale. Is this all the detective story is good for? Of course not. But Christie has given me too many hours and years of pleasure for me to complain.

The durability of her work is obvious, given the enduring appeal of the murder-mystery template that she helped pioneer and innovate. Christie lives on not only in the myriad screen adaptations of her work, but also in films as varied as Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” and Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” movies (which reminds me, I need to catch up with “Poker Face” ). She lives on in “Only Murders in the Building” and “Magpie Murders” and countless other examples that you can surely school me on, Mary, your little gray cells being way sharper than mine.

And Christie lives on, yes, in “A Haunting in Venice,” and in Branagh’s series of adaptations that — for all their flaws, and there are many — still have us dying to see what happens next.

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Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times. Previously she was assistant managing editor for arts and entertainment following a 12-year stint as television critic and senior culture editor. A Pulitzer Prize winner in 2015 and finalist for criticism in 2013 and 2014, she has won various awards for criticism and feature writing. She is the author of the Hollywood mysteries “Oscar Season” and “The Starlet.” She lives in La Crescenta with her husband, three children and two dogs.

Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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‘Death on the Nile’ Review: Gal Gadot Shines, and Kenneth Branagh Ups His Agatha Christie Game

Branagh's second Christie thriller, in which he once again plays Hercule Poirot as a wry dyspeptic noodge, sharpens the tension on 2017's "Murder on the Orient Express."

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Agatha Christie was born in 1890, and the heyday of movie adaptations of her novels goes quite a ways back (like, 70 or 80 years). The whole structure and flavor of this sort of delectably engineered whodunit, with its cast of suspects drawn in deliberate broad strokes and its know-it-all detective whose powers of deduction descend directly from Sherlock Holmes, is rooted in the cozy symmetry of the studio-system era. The last big-screen Christie adaptation that could be considered an all-out success, critically and commercially, was probably Sidney Lumet’s 1974 “ Murder on the Orient Express ,” a lavishly corny and irresistible amusement in which Albert Finney played the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot as a fussbudget egomaniac with pursed lips and hair that resembled an oil slick (he was like Inspector Clouseau with a brain transplant).

“Murder on the Orient Express” was actually an event movie (it received half a dozen Oscar nominations, and Ingrid Bergman even won). But the Christie adaptations that followed — “ Death on the Nile ” (1978), “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980), “Evil Under the Sun” (1982) — were half-baked suspense films that felt, collectively, like the fading embers of a genre. In recent decades, the Christie formula has seemed more at home on television (e.g., the British “Miss Marple” series), where it has come off as less hermetic and precious — that is, until Kenneth Branagh picked up the gauntlet for his 2017 remake of “Murder on the Orient Express.” That picture was something of a mixed bag: sterling production values, a puckish sense of play, not enough tension to an overly familiar mystery. But Branagh, acting from behind a mustache so extended it seemed to have its own geological layers, invested Poirot with a wry dyspeptic noodginess.

“Death on the Nile,” based on Christie’s 1937 novel, is essentially Branagh’s sequel to that film, and I was eager to see if he could tighten the screws on his version of the Christie genre. He does. The new film is crisper and craftier than “Murder on the Orient Express”; it’s a moderately diverting dessert that carries you right along. It never transcends the feeling that you’re seeing a relic injected with life serum, but that, in a way, is part of its minor-league charm.

Apart from Branagh, the first star of “Death on the Nile” is the Nile. Early on, the Egyptian locations feel a touch synthetic — you can tell the Pyramids are CGI — but by the time the characters are wandering through the dusty nooks and crannies of Abu Simbel, the massive riverside temple carved out of a cliff as a monument to King Ramesses II, it becomes a backdrop of arresting majesty. The second star is the S.S. Karnak, the sprawling, two-tiered riverboat steamer that’s hosting a dozen luxury vacationers. Full of passageways and compartments, it’s a paragon of 1930s wealth porn and a better, more elaborate vehicle for suspense than the Orient Express. The third star is a vengeful aristocratic love triangle, which succeeds at engaging us in the drama that precedes the murder, so that the foul play can then sharpen the tension.

At a London nightclub, the vampish heiress Linnet Ridgeway, played by Gal Gadot with a vivacious spark she hasn’t always shown outside the “Wonder Woman” films, takes a spin on the dance floor with Simon Doyle ( Armie Hammer ), the fiancé of her best friend, Jacqueline (Emma Mackey). The three then show up on the Karnak — only Linnet and Simon are now married and on their honeymoon, while the jealous, betrayed Jacqueline has become their stalker. She’s toting a .22 caliber handgun, along with an ace motivation for murder.

I won’t reveal who gets killed, but the fact that we actively miss that person works for the movie. So does Hammer’s performance as the wily, arrogant, exceedingly tan Simon — the actor’s presence in the film, after accusations of abuse were leveled against him, has been considered problematic, but it must be said that he pops onscreen more than most of the other actors.

Branagh updates details like some telltale red paint, but he keeps the original story intact. “Death on the Nile” lopes along pleasantly enough, feeding on Poirot’s prickly drive to solve the mystery. In one interrogation, he gets seriously addled, a sign that Branagh wants us to take the detective’s obsessiveness seriously. The other sign is that he’s given Poirot a melancholy romantic subplot, which may be asking us to take him a little too  seriously.

The plot touches on such detours as a Tiffany necklace worthy of Liz Taylor and a blue-suited doctor with jealousy issues of his own, though he’s so stoic about it that you may do a triple take when you realize the actor playing him is Russell Brand. It all comes together in the scene where Poirot gathers the suspects and solves the crime. For about 10 minutes, the movie take wing, which is what you want from an Agatha Christie movie. Then again, the scene may remind you that there’s a movie not  based on Agatha Christie that so channels her spirit it’s effectively the best Christie film in half a century: “Knives Out.” “Death on the Nile,” decent as it is, can’t touch that film’s fusion of wit, excitement, and old-school whodunit glee. That’s not really a knock on Branagh. It’s just that once you’ve experienced Agatha Christie 2.0, it’s hard to go back.

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, New York, Jan. 25, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 127 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Studios release of a TSG Entertainment, Kinberg Genre, Scott Free Productions, The Mark Gordon Company production. Producers: Ridley Scott, Kevin J. Walsh, Kenneth Branagh, Judy Hofflund. Executive producers: Mark Gordon, Simon Kinberg, Matthew Jenkins, James Prichard, Matthew Prichard.
• Crew: Director: Kenneth Branagh. Screenplay: Michael Green. Camera: Haris Zambarloukos. Editor: Úna Ni Dhonghaíle. Music: Patrick Doyle.
• With: Kenneth Branagh, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Emma Mackey, Annette Bening, Tom Bateman, Ali Fazal, Russell Brand, Sophie Okonedo, Letitia Wright, Dawn French.

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First reactions land for Yellowstone star's new movie A Haunting in Venice

Poirot and his impressive 'tache are back.

Adapted from Christie's novel Hallowe'en Party , A Haunting in Venice sees a now-retired Hercule Poirot (Branagh) reluctantly attend a séance on All Hallows' Eve in post-World War II Venice, where he now lives in self-imposed exile.

It's not long though before one of the guests is murdered, and Poirot has to shake off his retirement to solve his latest case.

Those lucky few to have already seen A Haunting in Venice have now taken to social media to share their first reactions to the movie. So is the new adaptation an early Halloween treat for Christie fans?

" A Haunting in Venice is the best movie in Kenneth Branaghs's Hercule Poirot saga. It's an ingenious, twisty and surprisingly spooky whodunnit, blessed with a nightmarish version of Venice and a stellar cast," wrote Digital Spy 's deputy movies editor Mireia Mullor.

Carson Timar , Editor in Chief of Clapper agreed, calling the film "a fantastic Halloween murder mystery" that is Kenneth Branagh's best Hercule Poirot feature to date.

"With incredible visuals, a brooding haunting tone, and a satisfying conclusion, this has all the elements to be a yearly tradition," he wrote.

Variety 's Jazz Tangcay was similarly impressed, enjoying one scene in particular. "Loved the Belfast reunion with Jude Hill and Jamie Dornan," she wrote, adding: "Another brilliant and thrilling whodunnit from Kenneth Branagh."

" A Haunting In Venice perfectly combines mystery and horror elements in a way that neither one overshadows the other," wrote Rotten Tomatoes film critic Tessa Smith .

"It's spooky with fantastic jump scares and a great mystery. My two favorite genres so I am very happy. Tina Fey is fantastic!"

Critic Bill Bria , who writes for Slash Film, called A Haunting in Venice "another solid Branagh Poirot picture", whilst film director Joe Russo (one half of the Russo Brothers) said it was "dripping with macabre".

"The Halloween-set murder mystery is a wide-angle lens love-fest that is a welcome stylistic shakeup, swapping NILE 's green screens for atmospheric, physical locations," he explained.

Hello Magazine 's Rebecca Lewis said that the movie took "time to find its groove" but turned out to be a "captivating" watch, which was "helped by gorgeous production design and score, and just enough jump scares to keep you on edge".

One less favourable review of the film came from Rama Tampubolon of Rama's Screen , who disagreed with his fellow critics, claiming A Haunting in Venice "was the weakest of the Hercule Poirot saga".

"Less predictable than the 2nd film but that's a low bar," he explains. "The reveals were also downright ludicrous. Thank god for the cinematography that at times kept it from being painfully chatty and mind-numbing."

Branagh has assembled another all-star cast for A Haunting in Venice , including Yellowstone star Kelly Reilly, Call My Agent 's Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan , Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey and Mayor of Kingstown 's Emma Laird, among others.

The movie is the third Christie novel that Branagh has directed, following Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile .

Both movies had solid, if unspectacular reviews, but only Murder on the Orient Express was a box-office hit with $353 million and Death on the Nile struggled, grossing only $137 million.

A Haunting in Venice is released in cinemas on September 15.

Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

Acting Deputy News Editor, Digital Spy Emily is an experienced entertainment writer and editor, reporting on all things TV , film , soaps and showbiz . An NCTJ-qualified journalist, with a First Class Honours degree in Journalism from the University of Sussex, Emily has previously worked at Hello magazine, BBC South News and GoodtoKnow . She joined Digital Spy as Acting Deputy News Editor in May 2023.  A small and big-screen obsessive – with subscriptions to every TV and film service under the sun – Emily knows her movie stars from soap stars, and is always clued up on the latest reality show dumping, just-dropped trailer or off-screen spat. She's interviewed a number of celebrities over the years, with highlights including The Masked Singer host Joel Dommett and GMB 's Kate Garraway (who "loved" her trousers).  Emily counts Sharon Horgan and Julia Davis as her TV heroes, and is a loyal Wes Anderson fan.

.css-15yqwdi:before{top:0;width:100%;height:0.25rem;content:'';position:absolute;background-image:linear-gradient(to right,#51B3E0,#51B3E0 2.5rem,#E5ADAE 2.5rem,#E5ADAE 5rem,#E5E54F 5rem,#E5E54F 7.5rem,black 7.5rem,black);} Yellowstone

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A Haunting in Venice: release date, cast, plot, trailer and everything we know

A Haunting in Venice stars Kenneth Branagh in his third Poirot mystery.

A Haunting in Venice is the third Hercule Poirot mystery starring Kenneth Branagh as Agatha Christie's brilliant Belgian detective.

Having already cracked Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022) , Poirot will this time use his famous "little grey cells" in Italy.

Billed as "an unsettling supernatural thriller", the makers say the tale is inspired by Christie's novel, "Hallowe’en Party". 

Speaking about the movie, star and director Kenneth Branagh says: "This is a fantastic development of the character Hercule Poirot, as well as the Agatha Christie franchise. 

"Based on a complex, little-known tale of mystery set at Halloween in a pictorially ravishing city, it is an amazing opportunity for us, as filmmakers, and we are relishing the chance to deliver something truly spine-chilling for our loyal movie audiences."

Christie's great-grandson and A Haunting in Venice' s executive producer James Prichard told Total Film he welcomed the move into the paranormal in the new movie. He said: "If we are going to continue to make these films, we can't do the same thing over and over. A departure at this point is possibly risky, but it also has the potential to keep it alive, bring in a different audience, and so do something interesting that will hopefully surprise and delight."

A trailer and a fab poster have now been released for the movie.

In our A Haunting in Venice review , we concluded: "Drawing inspiration from a collection of Christie short stories that touch on the supernatural, The Last Seance, Branagh and Green create nerve-tingling tension from the clash between Poirot’s world of logic and a very different world that may contain ghosts and ghoulish goings on. 

"Add director of photography Harris Zambarloukos’s titled camera angles and it’s no wonder we feel eerily off balance. The film’s Venetian backdrop works superbly, too, and is a lot more convincing than Death on the Nile’s fake-looking blue-screen Egypt. Rowena’s palazzo may have been created in a Pinewood studio but, like the film itself, it is effectively creepy and chilling. Woo-woo? Maybe. Whoo-hoo! Definitely." 

Here's everything we know about Poitot number 3, A Haunting in Venice …

 A Haunting in Venice release date

A Haunting in Venice was released on September 15, 2023, in the US and UK. See our new movies in 2023 guide for more films coming soon.

A Haunting in Venice plot

The plot is inspired by Agatha Christie's 1969 novel, "Hallowe'en Party", which is one of her less well-known works. Having previously adapted classics Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile , the makers have opted to bring to screen something much less familiar to audiences. It feels like the makers are comfortable that movie-goers have grown used to Branagh's Poirot and therefore they can twist Christie's work more than before.

Set in Italy after World Two, a largely retired Poirot attends a seance with his friend Ariadne (Tina Fey). Needless to say, Poirot is unimpressed with the seance conductor, Miss Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), who he sees as a fraud preying on the vulnerable. But Rowena (Kelly Reilly) believes Reynolds can help connect her to the daughter she's lost.

When one of the guests is murdered, Poirot faces a chilling and terrifying case. It's clear the makers plan on playing up the Halloween theme and the movie is likely to have a scary tone. Plus his legendary mustache is back in full bushy mode!

Kenneth Branagh returns as Poirot. Joining him among others is Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Kyle Allen, Emma Laird, Michelle Yeoh, Camille Cottin and Jamie Dornan. 

Is there a trailer?

Yes and the trailer sets the movie up wonderfully...

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David is the What To Watch Editor and has over 20 years of experience in television journalism. He is currently writing about the latest television and film news for What To Watch.

Before working for What To Watch, David spent many years working for TV Times magazine, interviewing some of television's most famous stars including Hollywood actor Kiefer Sutherland, singer Lionel Richie and wildlife legend Sir David Attenborough. 

David started out as a writer for TV Times before becoming the title's deputy features editor and then features editor. During his time on TV Times, David also helped run the annual TV Times Awards. David is a huge Death in Paradise fan, although he's still failed to solve a case before the show's detective! He also loves James Bond and controversially thinks that Timothy Dalton was an excellent 007.

Other than watching and writing about telly, David loves playing cricket, going to the cinema, trying to improve his tennis and chasing about after his kids!

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy’ On BritBox, Where A Man Investigates Murders In A British Village

Where to stream:.

• Agatha Christie's Murder is Easy
• agatha christie

‘Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy’ Exclusive Clip: A Body Is Found In BritBox’s New Adaptation Of Agatha Christie’s Novel

Stream it or skip it: ‘death and other details’ on hulu, where an old detective and a young woman solve a murder on a cruise ship, stream it or skip it: ‘a haunting in venice’ on hulu, kenneth branagh’s creepy riff on agatha christie, stream it or skip it: ‘see how they run’ on hulu, a fizzy, self-aware murder-mystery bolstered by an endearing saoirse ronan performance.

We’ve said it many times, but it’s worth repeating: We’re amazed at how enduring Agatha Christie ‘s novels have been given that she wrote her final novel in 1973. The mysteries she wrote have not only become a template for modern mysteries to follow, but the stories themselves have been easily modified — whether it’s story elements or the setting — for modern tastes. A new adaptation takes an 85-year-old Christie novel and makes it relatable to modern-day viewers, simply by making a change to the main character.

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S MURDER IS EASY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man stares at a stretch of woods, then looks behind him. He holds a wooden statue. Then he starts running.

The Gist: The man drops the wooden figure and sees it catch on fire. Then we see that Luke Fitzwilliam (David Jonsson) is thinking about that moment while on a ship taking him to England from his home country of Nigeria. On the train to London, an older woman named Lavinia Pinkerton (Penelope Wilton) gets on and sits across from him. She finds out that he was an attaché for a British government representative, and when his boss got a job in the governmental hub in Whitehall, Fitzwilliam decided to follow.

Miss Pinkerton talks to Fitzwilliam about how she’s going to London to report a series of homicides in her home village of Wychwood-under-Ashe. The people in town are dismissing them as accidents, but she knows who actually killed them. “Murder is easy for a certain type of person,” Pinkerton tells him when he asks how that person has not been discovered.

When they disembark in London, on the day of the Epson Derby, she tells him to make a bet on a 40-1 horse. She picks more winners than losers, and the longshot she picked came from behind to win. When he goes to give her her winnings, though, Pinkerton is hit by a car that kills her and speeds away.

He wants to give the money to someone back in Wychwood-under-Ashe, and he feels that Pinkerton’s death was murder. So, with a few days before he starts his new job, he takes the train up to the village; the first place he goes is the inquest into the deaths of the two victims Pinkerton talked about; the first person he meets is Bridget Conway (Morfydd Clark); he tells her he’s a cultural anthropologist doing a book on superstitions.

When he’s invited to a dinner held by Lord Whitfield (Tom Riley), whose family founded the village, he finds out that Bridget is the aristocrat’s fiancée and that she invited him. Putting up with the various racial biases from the guests — Whitfield thinks Fitzwilliam grew up in a “mud hut” in Nigeria — he tells the horrified guests that Pinkerton was killed.

He decides to remain in town to investigate further, thinking that the person who killed the other people killed Pinkerton. But as more people die, he starts to zero in on Dr. Thomas (Mathew Baynton), the village’s physician, who seems to give a different level of care to the town’s wealthy than he does to its working class population, and seems to ascribe to a philosophy that Fitzwilliam finds abhorrent. In the meantime, Bridget, intrigued by Fitzwilliam and the reason why he’s really in town, helps him with the investigation.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? How many hours of Agatha Christie adaptations are on BritBox and various other streaming outlets? Millions, as it turns out , so we’ll pick two recent adaptations for comparison: The ABC Murders and Ordeal By Innocence .

Our Take: By making the main character of Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy , Luke Fitzwilliam, from Nigeria, Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre, who adapted the 2-part series from Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel , changes the dynamics of the show quite a bit. The original Fitzwilliam was stationed in India, but is decidedly white. This version of Fitzwilliam has to battle with not fitting in pretty much anywhere he goes, and he’s immediately viewed with suspicion in a place like Wychwood-under-Asche.

That aspect of the adaptation gives the story’s haves-vs.-have-nots theme a bit more depth. The story becomes more than just about the village’s working class population being picked off one-by-one and the wealthy members of the town being dismissive and uncaring about those deaths. It’s about how Fitzwilliam itself fits in that structure. When he hangs out with his fellow West Africans in London, more than one of them point out how he’s Anglicized himself, but to most of the people he’s around, he represents what used to be called “The Dark Continent” by the various European colonizers who occupied Nigeria and other countries.

So, even though the series takes place in the early 1950s (about 15 years after its original setting), making Fitzwilliam Nigerian immediately modernizes the story. Jonsson communicates Fitzwilliam’s confidence in spite of the obstacles he faces on a daily basis.

The story is a bit heavy on talking and light on murder in the first hour, to the point where things start to drag a bit. Some of the side characters, like Reverend Humbleby (Mark Bonnar), the town vicar, and his family, are a bit underdeveloped. But that’s generally how all Christie mysteries go. Some of the group are suspects, some are victims. Things don’t really gel between Fitzwilliam and Bridget until close to the end of the first hour, where they start to pull together in trying to get somewhere with the investigation, but the chemistry between Jonsson and Clark is fun to watch.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Another village resident becomes a victim, this being one that straddles both the working class and wealthy populations of the town. Sleeper Star: Mark Bonnar, who plays Reverend Humblebly, always has an understated but significant presence in whatever he does, which we’ve been noticing at least since he stole scenes in Catastrophe .

Most Pilot-y Line: The “mud hut” line was pretty cringeworthy, but Fitzwilliam does get his comeuppance when he points out that his family were landowners in Nigeria. It might be a way for Ejiwunmi-Le Berre to point out the not-so-subtle racism in much of Christie’s work.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy modernizes an 85-year-old text simply by changing the nationality of its main character, and it makes the story a whole lot less creaky as a result.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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BritBox’s newest Agatha Christie adaptation Murder Is Easy reexamines the canon

BritBox kicked off March 2024 with a new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s murder mystery classic Murder Is Easy . BritBox, along with production company Mammoth Screen and ITV, officially took over from the BBC stewardship of the made-for-television and streaming Christie adaptations starting with last year’s premiere of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

Agatha Christie’s mystery novels and short stories have never fallen out of favor with mystery fans. Her novels and short stories have influenced generations of authors and screenwriters to adapt her works or incorporate elements of her themes into original stories. Recent television and movie adaptations have decided to remove racial and antisemitic slurs, and toned down the sexism of Christie’s era. Murder is Easy takes this to the next level by confronting the spoken and unspoken bias in the text head-on.

The whodunit starts with Luke Fitzwilliam (David Jonsson) who is traveling to London to accept an appointment to a position at Whitehall. His seatmate on the train, Miss Pinkerton (Penelope Wilton), tells him she’s traveling to London to report to the police that several people have died in her home village under mysterious circumstances. She believes it’s the work of a serial killer, but local officials have dismissed her and ruled the mysterious deaths suicides or accidents. Fitzwilliam then travels to the village to see if the coincidences are intentional. He discovers quickly that very few of the people he meets are trustworthy except for TK (Morfydd Clark).

GBH Drama spoke to screenwriter Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre and actors David Jonsson and Morfydd Clark about how Murder Is Easy makes the viewers not only think about who the killer is, but also the way racism, sexism, and ageism/ableism affect everyone in the supposedly idyllic English village.

Mammoth Screen pitched Ejiwunmi-Le Berre directly to write Murder is Easy via her agent. She read all of the book in a single night before making her pitch about how the story should be adapted. “I think this is a furious little feminist, culturally challenging, experimental novel,” Ejiwunmi-Le Berre said. “When you're adapting a book — and I've adapted a few now — it's like meeting somebody at a dinner party and you have a conversation with them and you find these points of interest, and you're not going to get to know them inside and out. It's not like you're writing the biography. I'm not here to write Agatha's biography. I'm here to adapt this book. It was who she was, and what she was thinking about on that particular day. On that particular day, I think she was steamingly furious about women's position in the world, and that was going to attract me. I also felt that it was really interesting, and obviously in a time-constricted, period-constricted perspective about class and culture and the stratifications of a British class system within the microcosm of the English village, which has been the purview of British novelists from Jane Austen and Fanny Burney onwards. We write villages: the village is the world.”

The English village in period dramas, up until recent years, has been portrayed largely as a racially homogeneous idyll. However, the evidence from recent historical and cultural research clearly shows that the creation of many villages stems from slavery and colonialism going all the way back to the Austen era. Murder Is Easy joins recent MASTERPIECE period dramas All Creatures Great And Small , Grantchester , and Tom Jones plus ITV’s The Larkins in pushing back on the idea that no POC ever lived in or visited English villages before the contemporary era.

These facts are clear, however whitewashing of the source material has fooled some viewers into believing that what they’ve seen on screen is what happened. “It is disingenuous to pretend that empire and colonialism don't exist,” Ejiwunmi-Le Berre said. “I know that that causes some discomfort with people; that people may feel I've imposed on the book with an agenda. I think I've excavated the book honestly. In the book, the character of Luke Fitzwilliam, who became Luke Obiako Fitzwilliam in my rendering, is a colonial police officer returning after 20 years in empire service from a fictional place. Obviously, in an adaptation of Agatha Christie, you can't have a fictional place. Right from the start of the book, Luke Fitzwilliam is talking about where he's coming from and then he's talking to Ms. Pinkerton and she says, ‘Oh, my friend's son is over serving as a policeman in Palestine’ and the first people that he meets on the train are these two colonels.”

With this in mind, “I gave him a real place to come from and that was Nigeria, which was where my family came from. It was then really easy for me to base him on my father's experience and my grandfather's experience coming to the UK, in their case, in the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s. So we set it in the '50s.”

Murder Is Easy draws on Hitchcock and other classic movie references to create a hostile environment where Fitzwilliam doesn’t feel at home. Ejiwunmi-Le Berre said that she was also influenced by Jordan Peele’s Get Out in her approach. Last year, Tré Ventour-Griffiths, a Black British PhD student, argued in a Medium article that Get Out provided a perfect framework for exploring the dark side of the classic English village . However, Murder Is Easy falls short of involving the supernatural to influence events.

For fans who believe that Agatha Christie’s stories should not be adapted with an eye to continued relevance for international audiences, they should be aware that the current Mammoth Screen Executive Producer also worked on the 2004 MASTERPIECE Marple series adaptation , as well as the pre-BritBox miniseries adaptations found on Acorn and Amazon Prime. The corporate names may change, but the executive producers and the continued support from Christie’s estate remain a constant.

Ejiwunmi-Le Berre’s socially conscious script is what drew both Clark and Jonsson to their respective roles.

Fitzwilliam encounters several Nigels and Lady Karens who say increasingly outrageous racist and punchable things, but he doesn’t react to these the way a Black man in 2024 would. “What was wonderful about this adaptation is that we weren't going to shy away from some of those beats and not shying away from racism and other mess, that you have to bring some of your opinions to it and some of your stuff to it,” Jonsson said. “Although to stay true to the time, I think that energy and tension created a lot of the drama for our piece and I think that that's what viewers today will probably connect most with.”

Race in 1955 is not the only -ism Murder is Easy touches upon. Bridget is constantly talked down to by her fiance, and her observations on the crimes are ignored by all except Fitzwilliam. “The women in Agatha Christie's world have quite a limited life,” Clark said. “They live a much smaller life than their male counterparts. But I think also in terms of racism, it's quite interesting to look back [at] Agatha Christie's work because there was lots of racism in it and it's kind of important … as a British white woman to see where you come from and how it wasn't that long ago that things like this were being written. And that's why I think it's kind of great that we're going back to these stories and looking at them through different lenses, and I kind of think that that will continue to happen.”

Every great Agatha Christie production has an array of British drama heavy hitters playing possible suspects, and Murder Is Easy is no exception. In addition to Penelope Wilton, MASTERPIECE fans can spot Mark Bonnar from Guilt, Tom Riley from Marple 2004 and Inspector Lewis, and Tamzin Outhwaite from Ridley Road . UK drama fan favorites Douglas Henshall fresh off Shetland, Sinead Matthews from Midsomer Murders , and Matt Baynton from Ghosts UK also play untrustworthy residents of the village.

Ejiwunmi-Le Berre had to balance depicting Christie’s supporting cast from the novel and letting minor characters take valuable time away from Fitzwilliam and Bridget. ”Some of the more extreme characters we had to excise. Also, there are too many characters to put in a two-hour show, so there are composites. Then again, as with Luke Obiako, I wanted to reflect on my experience.”

For instance, some viewers may not be able to believe that Lord Whitfield (Tom Riley) is so blatantly rude, but this is exactly the experience that Ejiwunmi-Le Berre wanted to reflect. “Lord Whitfield represents a self-made man, particularly from the room at the top, 1950s generation that I recognize in my life, that I've encountered in my life and the feeling of exceptionalism,” Ejiwunmi-Le Berre said. “I thought that Lord Whitfield's religious fundamentalism, which is completely in the book, combined with his bootstrapping, narcissistic exceptionalism, was definitely a character that could speak to our times. He's a populist through and through. The doctor is a composite of two characters in the book. I won't say who, but I wanted to talk about eugenics.”

Eugenics is another topic, entwined with empire, that “purist” viewers don’t believe belongs in period dramas. “I encountered quite a lot of pushback over here with people saying, ‘well, it was post-second World War, so there can't have been any eugenics.’ Well, the guy who discovered the transistor ... and my brain has had a little blip ... and who set up Silicon Valley, was a eugenicist, and that's post-second World War. I had people coming through my family's household — my stepfather was a very eminent scientist, and his supervisor had at one point been Chair of the Eugenicist Society — and my stepfather was a Holocaust survivor. People don't realize that some of these ideas still persisted in different ways.”

Lord Whitfield is also a walking contradiction of racist and antiracist actions. “I felt completely justified in talking about that,” Ejiwunmi-Le Berre said. “I know that some people struggled with the idea that this eugenicist would fall in love with a young woman — and a much younger woman — of what we would call Asian descent; of Indian Pakistani descent. I didn't find any anomaly there at all. If white racist people didn't also want to have sex with people who are Black and brown, the world would look very different than it does.”

Murder Is Easy is the first television Agatha Christie adaptation to be written by a Black screenwriter. Hopefully viewers can set aside their preconceived notions about what the Christie canon should feel like, so it won’t be the last.

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‘A Haunting In Venice’ Trailer: Kenneth Branagh & Tina Fey Attend The Séance of Michelle Yeoh In 20th’s New Agatha Christie Adaptation

By Matt Grobar

Matt Grobar

Senior Film Reporter

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20th Century Studios on Wednesday unveiled a new trailer for A Haunting in Venice — its third Agatha Christie adaptation from actor-filmmaker Kenneth Branagh, which hits theaters on September 15th.

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“Hercule Poirot, I found something. I’ve looked at it from every which way,” says Tina Fey’s Ariadne Oliver as the trailer begins. “I am the smartest person I ever met and I can’t figure it out, so I came to the second.”

Oliver’s concern is the psychic Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), who has been putting on séances so real, they boggle the mind of the non-believer. “Come with me to a séance,” says Oliver. “Spot the con I can’t.”

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Branagh notes that he, too, does not believe in psychics, but shows up at Reynolds’ abode nonetheless. Things get hairy when Reynolds channels the voice of a deceased young girl for her mother Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) and a mysterious murder follows.

“Somebody is dead. No one should leave this place until I know who did it,” says Poirot. “There must be a rational answer for all of this.”

Retorts Oliver, “Just admit that you are up against something bigger than you.”

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Check out the latest trailer for the film above.

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6 Best Agatha Christie Movies on Hulu, Max, and Prime (Mar 2024)

For decades, detective stories have reigned in our minds as thrilling experiences, complex in understanding yet attractive. Films have used this fact and adapted novels to help us quench our thirst. Needless to say, English author Agatha Christie’s detective novels are the go-to spots for such adaptations. And in this article, we bring you the best Agatha Christie Movies available for streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and Max.

6. Ten Little Indians (1959)

Directed by Paul Bogart, ‘Ten Little Indians’ is based on the author’s 1939 novel. It was made as a TV movie of around an hour. If you want to be transported to that particular era of filmmaking via an Agatha Christie story, this one serves the purpose just fine although you have to be content with the visual quality. However, it does a good job of condensing the novel.

The film follows ten strangers who arrive by invitation to a remote island only to find themselves getting killed one at a time by a mysterious killer. It is upto Detective William Henry Blore to track down the person. Can he? The cast of ‘Ten Little Indians’ includes Nina Foch, Romney Brent, Kenneth Haigh, Peter Bathurst, Barry Jones, Chandler Cowles and Valerie French. You can watch the film on Prime .

5. Innocent Lies (1995)

Loosely adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1944 novel ‘Towards Zero,’ this one follows British Detective Alan Cross who arrives at the French coast for the funeral of his close friend Joe Green who killed himself near a cliff-top mansion, or at least that’s what everyone is saying. Bent on finding out the truth behind Joe’s suicide, he decides to follow the people living in the mansion. This includes Lady Helena Graves, the matriarch connected to the Nazis, her sensuous daughter Celia and her guilt-struck son Jeremy who is coping with the accidental death of his brother for which he is responsible. There is also an American guy whom Celia is soon to marry and a Jewish woman whom Jeremy is married to.

As Cross keeps digging, he realizes that there’s more to Jeremy and Celia than their sibling relationship and it is connected to a dark family secret that might have led to Green’s death/murder. The cast includes Adrian Dunbar, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Dorff, Gabrielle Anwar, Alexis Denisof, Marianne Denicourt, and Keira Knightley (film debut). You can watch the film on Prime .

4. Death on the Nile (1978)

Written by Christie in 1937, this one has famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot looking into a murder case while on vacation onboard the S.S. Karnak on the Nile River. When heiress Linnet Ridgeway is found shot in the head, her husband Simon Doyle’s former lover Jacqueline “Jackie” de Bellefort, who is angry at the newlywed couple, is thought to be the killer. If it could only be that easy. Poirot thus sets off on a shady quest to find out who among the passengers is the culprit as each has a reason to kill Linnet and would benefit from her death one way or another. The 1978 version is directed by John Guillermin and stars Peter Ustinov (Poirot), Lois Chiles, Mia Farrow, Simon MacCorkindale, David Niven, and Bette Davis. You can watch it on Prime .

3. A Haunting in Venice (2023)

The third installment of Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha-Christie adaptation after ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ (2017) and ‘‘Death on the Nile’ (2022), ‘A Haunting in Venice’ is based on the author’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party’ and offers a supernatural take on the detective’s investigation. After being an audience to a séance in a palazzo in Venice, Italy, Poirot (Branagh) finds himself in the company of a killer who seems to be beyond the natural. The deaths that occur seem to be connected to the palazzo’s dark past and Poirot has to hurry if he wants to find the killer before the killer gets to him. To find out if the Belgian mastermind can associate reason and logic with the inexplicable events, you can watch the film on Hulu .

The following movies are available on Paramount and Tubi:

2. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Based on Christie’s 1934 novel of the same name, this Sidney Lumet directorial follows famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot who boards the lavish Orient Express that will take him from Istanbul to London where another case awaits. He denies American businessman Samuel Ratchett’s offer to be hired as a bodyguard (Ratchett has received threats in the form of letters) and finds the latter dead the next morning. Among his suspects are the first-class passengers, each of whom, as he soon finds out, has a reason to kill. How Poirot manages to find the murderer is what we get to see.

While Poirot is played by Albert Finney, the rest of the passengers are played by Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Jacqueline Bisset. The film received 6 nominations at the 1975 Academy Awards out of which it won for Best Supporting Actress (Ingrid Bergman). You can watch it on Paramount+ .

1. Appointment with Death (1988)

Another Hercule Poirot adaptation, this film is based on Agatha Christie’s 1938 novel of the same name. Directed by Michael Winner, ‘Appointment with Death’ follows the Belgian detective (Peter Ustinov) as he investigates the murder of widowed dominating stepmother Emily Boynton (Piper Laurie) in Jerusalem. She was disliked by her three children, Raymond (John Terlesky), Lennox (Nicholas Guest), and Carol (Valerie Richards,) as she wanted to destroy their father’ will wherein he left a hefty amount of money for each of the siblings. This naturally makes them the suspects.

Also within the circle of Poirot’s suspicion, we have MP Lady Westholme (Lauren Bacall), family lawyer Jefferson Cope (David Soul) who was being blackmailed by Emily to destroy the will, and Lennox’s wife Nadine (Carrie Fisher). To find out who the killer is, you can watch the film on Tubi .

Read More: Best Agatha Christie Style Movies and Shows on Netflix

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Screen Rant

Controversial doctor who showrunner adapting equally infamous agatha christie book for netflix.

Netflix announces an adaptation of an infamous Agatha Christie novel, set to be written by controversial Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall.

• Netflix taps former Doctor Who showrunner, Chris Chibnall, for a new Agatha Christie adaptation.
• The Seven Dials Mystery features the lesser-known Christie character, Lady "Bundle" Brent.
• Despite initial criticism, Brent's rebellious traits could make for a fascinating character in the show.

Netflix has announced their new Agatha Christie adaptation, The Seven Dials Mystery , will be penned by former Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall. Previously serving as the head writer for the 2005 spinoff Torchwood , Chibnall was later tapped to succeed Steven Moffat as the showrunner for Doctor Who season 11. Responsible for casting Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor in the show’s long-running history, Chibnall’s tenure as showrunner generated some degree of controversy, with several commentators accusing the writer’s episodes of being too politically motivated.

Netflix has officially announced that they will be teaming with the former Doctor Who showrunner on a new television adaptation of Christie’s 1929 mystery novel, The Seven Dials Mystery . The show is also set to be executive produced by The Crown’s Suzanne Mackie under her Orchid Pictures banner and Good Omens’ Chris Sussman. Chris Sweeney, director of The Tourist , has been tapped to direct. Check out the statement made by Mackie below:

I am excited to be bringing The Seven Dials Mystery to life, and to be introducing a new generation of iconic Christie characters to the screen. It has been a joy to work with Chris Chibnall in creating this bold, authored and ambitious vision for the series. Together with Chris Sussman and Agatha Christie Limited and, under the masterful direction of Chris Sweeney, we are thrilled to embark on this creative journey. I could not think of a more exciting first project for Orchid Pictures, or a more perfect home for this story than Netflix.

Why The Seven Dials Mystery Is An Odd Choice To Adapt

Agatha christie has far more well-known characters.

Widely regarded as one of the world’s most prolific and well-known mystery writers, Christie’s works have previously been adapted to screen dozens of times . While modern audiences may be more familiar with the Hercule Poirot movies helmed by Kenneth Branagh, Christie’s assorted characters have a long history of being brought to life as movies and television shows, beginning with the 1928 silent movie, The Passing of Mr. Quin. Since then, countless writers, actors and directors have all put their spin on the authors’ now iconic tales.

Death On The Nile: 10 Agatha Christie Novels Yet To Receive Film Adaptations

Yet among Christie’s assorted works , The Seven Dials Mystery seems, at first glance, to be an odd choice for Netflix to pursue. Originally lambasted by critics on the book’s original release, The Seven Dials Mystery features neither of Christie’s better-known detectives, Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. Instead, the author returned to a character first introduced in her 1925 book The Secret of Chimneys to focus on the young aristocrat and socialite, Lady "Bundle" Brent.

The Seven Dials Mystery was previously adapted as a 1981 TV movie starring Cheryl Campbell as Bundle Brent.

Yet, while Bundle Brent is a far less recognizable character than Christie’s other iconic sleuths, the character’s rebellious traits could make for a fascinating character in the Netflix adaptation. Resourceful and headstrong, Brent has often been described as a quintessential 1920s “flapper”, known equally for her appeal to the opposite sex and her penchant for fast driving. With Chibnall responsible for introducing Doctor Who fans to the first female Doctor, it will be interesting to see what he has in store for The Seven Dials Mystery .

Source: Netflix

Agatha Christie’s ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ Will Be Adapted for Netflix by Former 'Doctor Who' Showrunner

Chris Chibnall isn't the first 'Who' showrunner to partner with Netflix, either.

The Big Picture

• Netflix and Chris Chibnall are teaming up to adapt Agatha Christie's The Seven Dial Mystery into a new series.
• The show will be the first by Netflix's Orchid Pictures and promises to bring thrilling mystery to audiences.
• With executive producers like Suzanne Mackie and James Prichard, the series is sure to captivate viewers worldwide.

Former Doctor Who showrunner and Broadchurch writer Chris Chibnall is teaming up with Netflix to adapt a new Agatha Christie mystery. According to Netflix, the show will be based on Christie's The Seven Dial Mystery . Chibnall will executive produce through his company Imaginary Friends, alongside James Prichard of Agatha Christie Limited (ALC). The company manages the literary and media rights of the late famous mystery author. Pritchard is also Christie's great-grandson. The Netflix series will also be executive produced by Suzanne Mackie ( The Crown ) of Orchid Pictures as well as Chris Sussman ( Good Omens ). Chris Sweeney will direct.

First published in 1929, The Seven Dials Mystery is described on the Agatha Christie website as:

Gerry Wade had proved himself to be a champion sleeper; so the other house guests decided to play a practical joke on him. Eight alarm clocks were set to go off, one after the other, starting at 6.30 a.m. But when morning arrived, one clock was missing and the prank had backfired with tragic consequences. For Jimmy Thesiger in particular, the words ‘Seven Dials’ were to take on a new and chilling significance.

There's "Still More" to Explore with New Christie Adaptation

According to Netflix, this is the first series by the streaming service to go into production with Mackie's Orchid Pictures. The company was founded under Netflix back in 2020. Netflix's Anne Mensah says, "Agatha Christie’s storytelling has been thrilling mystery lovers for generations but there is still more for us to explore for audiences at Netflix." Christie's works have been adapted time and again over the course of the last century, most recently A Haunting in Venice (2023), Death on the Nile (2022) and Murder on the Orient Express (2017).

Chris Chibnall spent time as Doctor Who showrunner from 2017-2021 . Suzanne Mackie most recently was the executive producer for the critically acclaimed series The Crown , detailing a fictionalized version of the life of the British Royal family across six seasons. Prichard calls working with Chibnall, Mackie and Netflix "a dream come true," and says "I think viewers will love this world that we have created, and hope for more."

Filming will begin sometime this summer.

Netflix Announces 'Seven Dials Mystery' Agatha Christie Series From 'The Crown' EP Suzanne Mackie

N etflix on Thursday announced a new Agatha Christie mystery series from The Crown executive producer Suzanne Mackie, written by Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall.

The Seven Dials Mystery, set to be directed by Chris Sweeney (The Tourist, Back to Life), is the first project from Orchid Pictures, which was founded by Mackie in 2020 under a deal with Netflix.

"I am excited to be bringing 'The Seven Dials Mystery' to life, and to be introducing a new generation of iconic Christie characters to the screen, Mackie said in a statement. It has been a joy to work with Chris Chibnall in creating this bold, authored and ambitious vision for the series. Together with Chris Sussman and Agatha Christie Limited and, under the masterful direction of Chris Sweeney, we are thrilled to embark on this creative journey. I could not think of a more exciting first project for Orchid Pictures, or a more perfect home for this story than Netflix."

Orchid Pictures was founded with the goal of producing stories from both up-and-coming and award-winning writers.

"Agatha Christies storytelling has been thrilling mystery lovers for generations but there is still more for us to explore for audiences at Netflix, said Anne Mensah, VP of Content at Netflix.

"Bundle Brent is one of my great grandmothers raft of interesting humorous sharp young female characters, said James Prichard of Agatha Christie Limited, who will also executive produce. To see her brought to life through the words of Chris Chibnall and this production with Orchid Pictures and Netflix is a dream come true. I think viewers will love this world that we have created, and hope for more."

In addition to writing, Chibnall will also executive produce through his company Imaginary Friends.

The Seven Dials Mystery will begin filming this summer.

TMX contributed to this article.

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