Agatha and the Midnight Murders is a 2020 television film which features Agatha Christie as a character. The film was directed by Joe Stephenson with screenplay by Tom Dalton. This was the third TV film by Dalton in this genre, the first two being Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018) and Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar (2019). Like the previous two, the film's closing credits starts with an announcement: ”This film has not been endorsed, licensed or authorised by the estate of Agatha Christie or by Agatha Christie Limited.” The film was first broadcast on Channel 5 in the UK on 5 Oct 2020 and on PBS in the US on 25 May 2021.
Synopsis[]
The film is set during World War 2. Agatha Christie is beset with financial difficulties because royalties from America are not coming in. She comes up with a plan: she writes a novel where she kills off her famous detective Hercule Poirot and offers to sell it to a rich private buyer and fan. A meeting is set up at a London hotel to transact the sale. But this is in the middle of the blitz and the hotel guests find themselves holed up in an air raid shelter during an air raid. The tension mounts when a series of murders takes place and it becomes clear that one of the guests is a murderer.
Plot summary[]
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Cast[]
- Helen Baxendale as Agatha Christie
- Alistair Petrie as Sir Malcolm Campbell
- Blake Harrison as Travis Pickford
- Gina Bramhill as Grace Nicory
- Vanessa Grasse as Nell Lewis
- Elizabeth Tan as Jun Yuhuan
- Daniel Caltagirone as Eli Schneider
- Jodie McNee as PC O'Hanauer
- Morgan Watkins as Rocco Vella
- Michael D. Xavier as Max Mallowan
- Scott Chambers as Clarence Allen
- Thomas Chaanhing as Frankie Lei
- Jacqueline Boatswain as Audrey Evans
Title[]
In an interview with the Radio Times, Dalton revealed that the film originally was being called Agatha and the Death of X.[1]
References and allusions[]
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References to actual history, geography, and current science[]
At one point in the film, Agatha is asked about her knowledge about Bletchley Park and the work taking place there. In real life Agatha was suspected of knowing about the secret war effort, after one of her characters in her novel N or M? is named Major Bletchley.