Teresa Reviews Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie documentary

Teresa reviews Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie documentary and says enjoy the new stories and photos and ignore Worsley’s class biases

(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel

Is it entertaining? 4 Agathas

Yes, although I’d have preferred seeing more of Lucy’s guests talking and less of her reacting to them.

Is it educational? 3½ Agathas

Lucy brings up topics and then doesn’t expand on them or elides past events we know happened.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

History is endlessly fascinating. The further you get away from the school system’s boring, dull, bloodless pablum and closer to the vivid, crazy reality, the more you’ll like it. You’d think public education’s purpose was to make students hate reading and loathe history, turning them into ignorant, apathetic consumers easily swayed to whatever their betters want them to believe.

a href=”https://peschelpress.com/agatha-christie-she-watched/” target=”_blank”>Lucy Worsley’s mission in life is to remind you, dear viewer and reader, that there’s plenty of remarkable history you know nothing about. Which is why when she omitted facts we knew, we had to stop the DVD so we could argue fruitlessly with the TV.

For example, Lucy talked about Agatha holing up after her disappearance yet completely skipped the three months spent in the Canary Islands! Let that be a reminder that Agatha always traveled, starting when she was a girl and her family relocated to France to save money. She attended boarding school in Paris. She visited relatives spread across England. She made her debut in Egypt (which, to be fair, she mentioned). In 1922, she and Archie traveled around the world to promote the British Empire’s commerce (which, to be fair, she didn’t).

Why is this important? Because when Lucy discussed Agatha, she omitted this background, implying traveling to the Middle East was a sign she was becoming her own woman. Three hours isn’t much time, but could Lucy at least mention that Agatha’s trips to the Middle East after her divorce were perfectly in character and not some amazing new development?

Another item Lucy could have expanded, but didn’t, was when Agatha took out a mortgage in her own name in 1926 to buy Styles with her money. I bought a house in Virginia in 1988 and my mortgage listed me as femme sole and a spinster owner because I didn’t have a husband or father signing the check. Lucy pointed out the boilerplate contract didn’t have the “he’s” crossed out and replaced by “she’s” to reflect Agatha’s sex. Lucy didn’t say that British women had been allowed to buy property since the Married Women’s Property Rights Act of 1882. Agatha was unusual, but not necessarily unique.

Sigh. Because history is amazing and people’s lives are far too complicated to condense into a three-hour documentary and this is my review, I can provide via two quotes from Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) some insight into Agatha’s writing that Lucy missed.

“You can depict wine, love, women and great exploits on the condition that you are not a drunkard, a lover, a husband, or a hero. If you are involved in life, you see it badly; your sight is affected either by suffering or by enjoyment. The artist, in my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature.”

And:

“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

That is, if you’ve got an imagination, it’s not necessary to cheat on your spouse, creatively murder people, or wake up in the gutter after a binge to write convincingly on those subjects. In addition to her vivid imagination, nurtured during a boring childhood, Agatha lived a very full life. Her experiences on the hospital ward during the Great War alone could fill an entire book, and this is after she grew up observing Torquay high society from the fringes. Don’t forget her father was American (so gauche) and they had money issues. After Agatha’s father’s death, the money issues became critical, which was why she debuted in Cairo and not London. It explained why money is so often a motive in her stories. Just like she understood what violence could do to a person and their family, she understood what it meant to fret over paying bills.

But a full life doesn’t mean much if you aren’t observant and thoughtful, qualities Agatha had in spades. Her careful observations of the world around her, coupled with being a very good listener, an avid reader of everything, and her love of travel infuses her books. She didn’t need to live the kind of life biographers salivate over to write well. She only needed to pay close attention.

An interesting point I noticed — and thank you Lucy for bringing these previously unknown details to my attention — was about Agatha’s disappearance. I knew she was suffering from major distress. Her adored mother was dead. Archie wanted a divorce to marry his mistress. She’d already, in August, spent time at a health spa in Biarritz on the French Atlantic Coast (more travel!). I did not know about Agatha’s severe insomnia. Thus, when Lucy reenacted Agatha’s car accident on the edge of the quarry, my first thought was “maybe Agatha fell asleep while driving.” I’ve fallen asleep driving. It’s easy to do when it’s dark, and you’re exhausted. You wake up — suddenly — when the car veers off the road. Without seatbelts, you’ll smack your head into the steering wheel making you more disorientated.

Does Lucy mention this possibility when she mentions so many other possibilities? She does not, but then no one else seems to have ever done this either.

I also wished more time was spent with Lucy’s fascinating guests and less with Lucy herself. This really came home during her interview with the three authors who wrote Miss Marple short stories. I wanted more Jean Kwok, more Ruth Ware, more Kate Mosse (author, not supermodel) and less Lucy nodding and smiling. But like this is my review, she’s the star, so she gets the lion’s share of the airtime.

This sounds like I didn’t like the documentary. I did! Lucy received unprecedented access to the Christie archives. She interviewed a huge range of people who all, unlike some earlier documentaries, are eager to talk about how groundbreaking Agatha was. How she made it look easy. Why her books are still being devoured 40 years after her death when most authors fade into obscurity long before their death. Lucy told me things I didn’t know, even after watching numerous documentaries. That’s an achievement.

Most of all, the value of Lucy Worsley discussing Agatha’s remarkable achievements is similar to the value of Alan Carr’s documentary about Agatha, also released in 2022. Lucy Worsley is a respected historian who’s willing to do plenty of research even if it doesn’t make it onto the TV screen. Her fan base, unlike Alan Carr’s, is probably well-aware of Agatha Christie. But her fan base might sneer at a super-popular, female, old lady genre writer who made buckets of money. She’s not literary, you see, and for a large class of people, Agatha Christie is someone they read on the down-low instead of in public where their friends can criticize their reading choices.

Lucy Worsley makes Agatha’s merits public, noteworthy, and respectable. And that’s why you should watch this.