Teresa Reviews Agatha Christie: 100 Years of Suspense (2020)
Teresa reviews Agatha Christie: 100 Years of Suspense (2020) which uses her 10 major novels to define her life.
(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel
Is it entertaining? 4 Agathas
A different approach lifts this documentary above the average.
Is it educational? 4 Agathas
Overall, yes, but whoever wrote the script made some errors so don’t rely on it.
Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.
Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.
Agatha Christie documentaries — and I’ve now sat through a bunch of them! — tend to follow the same script. Assemble the usual suspects, retell Agatha’s life story, spend way too much time breathlessly rehashing her 11-day disappearance as though that was the most important event in her life, and don’t pay too much attention to the books.
Changing the format can be fraught with peril. The Agatha Christie Code (2005) tried to prove how Agatha wrote page-turners by using the biggest heap of literary and computer codswallop imaginable, mashed into a steaming heap of bizarreness. Agatha Christie’s Garden (2006) promised a tour of Greenway’s extensive gardens and then delivered a rehash of the same old thing, while skipping over Greenway’s landscape as if it was the same boring grass you find surrounding an office complex.
At least this documentary spent more time with her novels. Agatha loved writing stories and considered her books to be far more interesting than she was. Publishing her stories let them be read and enjoyed by millions. The money mattered too, but her need to write came first. Never forget that. She wanted to write. That’s why she turned out over six dozen novels, 16 plays, and uncounted short stories. There’s never been a complete collection of all her short stories, including the ones she rewrote into larger pieces like “The Second Gong” / Dead Man’s Mirror, or the ones she and brother-in-law Campbell Christie combined into The Big Four (1927).
Her remarkable productivity is rarely covered in a documentary — her 11-day disappearance is so much more exciting than a strong work ethic, sharp observation skills, and a vivid imagination, even though that’s what made her the bestselling novelist in the world — so it’s nice to see this one acknowledge ten novels that shaped how the world views her. They are The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder at the Vicarage, Murder on the Orient Express, Five Little Pigs, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None, A Murder Is Announced, The Pale Horse, and Curtain.
As always, you get the usual suspects talking about Agatha and her novels. Sophie Hannah, who’s writing new Poirot novels to fill in the gaps Agatha left, has plenty to say. So does novelist Anthony Horowitz who wrote many episodes of the Poirot TV series. Laura Thompson and Mark Aldridge appear, along with James Pritchard, Agatha’s great-grandson. You get some of the actors and actresses from movies and TV shows but not, sadly, David Suchet.
Having now sat through numerous documentaries, I did wonder how long each person interviewed actually spoke to the camera. Half an hour? An hour? An entire day? Laura Thompson is an expert on Agatha’s life and works and could probably talk all day about her. So is Mark Aldridge, who wrote a scholarly history of the film adaptations and well-researched histories of the Poirot and Marple stories. How much of what they said ended up on the cutting room floor? I’ll assume quite a lot because the filmmakers wouldn’t know what they wanted to use until they got into the editing room.
Likewise, Hugh Fraser (Captain Arthur Hastings) and Philip Jackson (Chief Inspector Japp) could have talked for hours about Poirot. They were an integral part of the series for decades. I know they’ve spoken on other documentaries but they must still have plenty of stories to recount.
But what I really wanted was background I haven’t seen before. Today, I got a taste. But only a taste.
I finally figured out why Samantha Bond has shown up regularly in the documentary circuit (this is her fourth outing). It’s not just because she’s acted in several Agatha TV films. It’s because of her mother, Pat Sandys (1926-2000). Sandys is one of those unsung heroines in promoting the Christie legacy. She was instrumental in coaxing Rosalind, Agatha’s daughter, to allow her mother’s novels to be adapted for television. Pat wrote the screenplays of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (1980) and The Seven Dials Mystery (1981), and produced The Agatha Christie Hour (1982). She also wrote the Secret Adversary episode of Partners in Crime (1983) featuring Tommy and Tuppence. Think of that! Samantha Bonds grew up on Agatha’s novels in a way most of us don’t. We only read the books. She read the novels and her mother put Agatha on TV. Did Samantha visit the sets? Hear talk about how to adapt Agatha? She probably did.
I can’t be the only Agatha fan in the English-speaking world who’d like to watch more of her movies. So I’ll ask again. Why aren’t those films available with English subtitles?
I can think of other questions too, along the lines of which novel is going to be adapted next and why’d you choose that one but alas, Basi Akpabio doesn’t get nearly as much screen time as he should, considering his critical position in Agatha Christie, Ltd.
Another question I’d ask is who wrote the script for the documentary? It was often uneven, with awkward segues from one section to the next, over and above the need to reinvolve the audience after each commercial break. What bugged me even more was mistakes in facts and dates that your typical viewer won’t notice. There were not “dozens” of Poirot movies before the Poirot TV series debuted. During her disappearance, Christie’s car was not found near the Silent Pool. And two years after Five Little Pigs was published in 1942, Europe was definitely not at peace. Anyone who’s spent time with Agatha’s books, films, documentaries, and especially reading Laura Thompson and Janet Morgan’s biographies will notice.
But problems or not, this is still one of the better documentaries out there. It’s largely not the same old thing that you’ve seen before and that makes it worth your time.
