Agatha Christie: Film and Television Adaptations

Agatha Christie’s plots have been interpreted for the screen for nearly a century and, just as the creators of those films and television productions have found different approaches to their adaptations, so too must the analysis of them be tailored to take into account their particular contexts and aims. Although widely discussed informally by fans and in the media, scholarship surrounding Agatha Christie on film and television is a limited but growing field of discourse. Some of the most substantial recent scholarship surrounding screen adaptations of Christie has further tapped into those areas that have previously received little attention. For example, I.R. Smith’s “Bollywood Adaptations of Agatha Christie” (2016) draws attention to a vibrant and active area of Christie film adaptations that has been little more than a footnote in previous discussions. Such an analysis is a positive sign for the slow but definite growth of Agatha Christie screen studies. In this chapter, I suggest ways in which analyses of Christie adaptations can be situated within adaptation studies, and offer some case studies that show how discussions of these screen productions may be informed by important biographical and industrial contexts and their associated scholarship.