BBC shares first look at new Agatha Christie drama for murderous Christmas special

“Anybody who can believe six impossible things before breakfast wins hands down at this game,” says Luke Fitzwilliam, the central character in Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel Murder is Easy.

It was first published in the UK just months before the start of the Second World War, a time of unrest across Europe. There appears to have been some kind of unrest in the Queen of Crime’s career too. She was already a huge name, and although her readers would have been expecting another tale featuring perhaps Poirot or Miss Marple, she opted for a completely different sleuth, which is where Fitzwilliam comes in.

The story has been adapted for the screen before. In 1982, Bill Bixby and Helen Hayes starred in a US TV version, and Benedict Cumberbatch appeared in a 2008 take on the tale, which added Miss Marple (played by Julia McKenzie) to the list of characters.

As has been the case with other festive Christie adaptations in recent years, a few tweaks have been made to the original, including setting it 15 years later in 1954. So rather than depicting Britain on the eve of war, it focuses on the nation still recovering from its ravages.

“Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre’s amazing adaptation of Murder is Easy digs into the divides at the heart of post-war English society, and we feel so lucky that the village of Wychwood is going to be brought to life by a dream cast,” claims executive producer James Gandhi. “With Meenu Gaur at the directing helm and David Jonsson playing the lead, this promises to be a thrilling ride!”

Fitzwilliam is actually on a train to London when he first hears about Wychwood from one of its residents, fellow passenger Miss Pinkerton. She tells him there’s a murderer on the loose in this otherwise sleepy place, and when she’s killed on her way to report the crimes at Scotland Yard, he feels it’s his duty to unmask whodunit before they can strike again.

Unfortunately, for the culprit murder is, as they say, easy, and soon, the bodies begin mounting up…

Penelope Wilton, Morfydd Clark, Mark Bonnar, Mathew Baynton, Douglas Henshall and Tamzin Outhwaite are among the wonderful supporting cast.

“Once again my great-grandmother’s stories have attracted some amazing talent,” smiles James Prichard, executive producer for Agatha Christie Ltd. “It is so exciting to see this group of actors embark on the re-telling of this great story. The concept of evil lurking in the quintessentially English village is a familiar trope, but what exactly it is that makes murder easy remains to be revealed.”

Lindsay Salt, director of BBC Drama, agrees: “With an intriguing central mystery and a fantastic creative team behind the camera, it’s no surprise that this new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunnit has attracted a who’s who of UK acting talent to bring Murder is Easy to the screen. BBC viewers are in for a treat that will keep them guessing to the very end.”

Either that or we, too, will need to believe six impossible things if we’re to solve the mystery ourselves.