Hadrien Debaer

In the L'étrange enlèvement du petit Bruno, the French adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly for the TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, Hadrien Debaer is the husband of novelist Eloïse Zennefort and the parallel of Marcus Waverly from the original story. His portrayal is slightly different in this adaptation. Like in the original, his wife has all the money and they live in a chateau. Here does not manage the estate as a squire but is a fencing instructor. The chateau is not in disrepair and he doesn't need money to restore it. The building actually belongs to his wife. She had bought it despite his misgivings.

Like in the original, Hadrien dismisses his son's nurse Régine Bouchon on the morning of the threatened kidnap. Later the rest of the domestic staff are also given time off during the danger period, although this is apparently with the acquiescence of the police (for reasons that are not explained). The method he uses to kidnap Bruno is also slightly different. He does make use of a priest hole, but Bruno is hidden there until much later. He works in cahoots with two other accomplices: Gérard Kerner, a bit-role actor hired to act as a tramp to create the first diversion and the nurse Régine who secretly re-enters the chateau grounds and then drives away in a car with a boy (her nephew), to create the impression that Bruno had been kidnapped and is being driven away. After the police leave, Hadrien then takes Bruno out of the priest hole and sends him to Régine's sister's town house where Régine looks after him.

In this adaptation, Hadrien also pulls off a successful attempt to get ransom and then has to murder his wife's secretary Gilles Vanberten when he stumbles on the plot. Hadrien's motive for the kidnapping is different from that in the original. Here he is bored and being bored, took up gambling and ran up hugh debts. Possibly to throw suspicion on his wife, Hadrien picks methods which his wife, a crime novelist, had used in her novels. This seemed to work because for a time, his wife was suspected of the kidnapping--with the motive of creating a publicity stunt for her writing career. Unlike the original where Poirot sends him off with a warning, here Hadrien is arrested at the end.

Hadrien is portrayed by Fabio Zenoni.