Teresa Reviews The Trouble with Agatha Christie (1991)

Teresa reviews The Trouble with Agatha Christie (1991) and saw a snapshot of Christie World from 1991.

(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel

Is it entertaining? 3 Agathas

They sure got a top-notch crowd to comment on Agatha!

Is it educational? 2 ½ Agathas

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

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

No subtitles, no ending, and I didn’t know who most of the commenters were, but I’ll bet a British TV audience in 1991 did.

This show isn’t exactly a documentary. It looked more like a chat show with far more audience participation than you’d expect. Maybe this was normal for British TV in 1991. I think it was loosely scripted because how else did the cameraman know who to pan over when our host, Michael Aspel, asked them for comment? He had a wide range of very famous people in the audience, too. A British audience of the time could play “Name that Celeb.” Of the people who spoke on camera, the two least famous were Mathew Prichard (Agatha’s grandson) and Kate Parkin, the editorial director at HarperCollins UK.

Before you dive in, be warned: we got our copy off YouTube and the last 5 minutes are missing. Plus and even more annoying, whoever made this into a VHS tape, did not have the rights to many of the film clips, so they’re blurred. If you’re familiar with the clips (which we were because of the Agatha films we’ve seen), you’ll figure it out. For the other clips, well, good luck! There was one that we had no idea what it was.

Amazingly, I did recognize one of the non-Agatha film clips but it was because of the Agatha project; specifically a Tommy & Tuppence film, The Unbreakable Alibi (1983). The story that film was based on was itself a parody of Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957). His mysteries revolved around alibies and railway times tables. They were so famous that Monty Python parodied the subgenre in the ’70s and that’s the clip shown here.

I’ll proceed in rough order of appearance. Michael Aspel was a well-known at the time and forgotten today TV host. He’s onstage with a chair for a guest (that went vacant until David Suchet got to sit in it) and surrounded on three sides by the audience. Behind him is a big screen that he’ll use when trying to interview Peter Ustinov remotely. He also uses the screen to show aforementioned illustrative film clips, proving that much of the show must have been scripted because how else would the clips be ready?

One of his first guests is Dr. Anthony Ward Clare, a noted psychiatrist who appeared regularly on chat shows of the time. Dr. Clare is very clear. He doesn’t like Agatha Christie, her books, her upbringing, or her audience. She’s too middle-class (which she was not; Agatha was gentry class with good connections), she wrote plot-heavy books with cardboard characters instead of intensive deep dives into the psyche, and her readers didn’t like wallowing in blood, as though that’s a major fault. Many of us don’t like the pornography of violence but Dr. Clare thinks we should adore it because it’s soooooo real.

In what seemed an unscripted moment, Kate Perkins, an editor at HarperCollins UK and Agatha’s publisher said her sales had been declining in the ’80s. Research indicated the gory, bloody covers were at fault. New, less graphic covers made Agatha’s sales rebound by 40%. Dr. Clare seemed unimpressed.

Mathew Pritchard, Agatha’s grandson, got to speak about his grandmother. I don’t know that he was impressed with Dr. Clare but he was very polite about it. He had fond memories of Agatha and missed her still.

Noted historian and novelist Lady Antonia Fraser didn’t care for Dr. Clare either. She loved Agatha’s novels and said so more than once.

Angela Lansbury was in the audience. She spoke about being part of The Mirror Crack’d (1980), when she played Miss Marple. That part led directly to her American TV show, Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996). She commented on how audiences around the world assumed Jessica Fletcher was Agatha Christie!

Peter Ustinov was interviewed via a remote, satellite hookup, cutting edge technology for the time. I’m not sure where he was, but it didn’t seem to be in England. Perhaps he was filming his travelogue, Peter Ustinov on the Orient Express (1991). He spoke twice, due to technical issues, including a discussion of David Suchet playing Inspector Japp alongside him in Thirteen at Dinner (1985). This was one of the blurred-out film clips but you’ll recognize both actors.

John Wells, noted British satirist, was interviewed. He and Mathew Prichard knew each other at Eton. Wells was tapped in the early ’60s to write a musical play based on Hickory Dickory Dock (1955) called Death Beat. Some songs were written but that’s all that happened. What a strange musical that would have been. It must have been the drugs in the air.

After John Wells came Sir Peter Saunders, noted British theatrical impresario. He discussed the play version of Witness for the Prosecution. According to him, it was his idea to turn the short story into a stage play. Agatha didn’t agree but when she saw his script, she wrote it herself (and better).

John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne and his wife, Countess Patricia Mountbatten were next. They’re also closely connected to Agatha. He talked her into selling the rights to Murder on the Orient Express, resulting in the 1974 film with Albert Finney. The Countess’ father was Lord Mountbatten, who, as a young man, wrote to Agatha in 1924 and suggested that it would be neat if the mystery was narrated by the murderer. Yep, that would be The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Graham Ison, former Scotland Yard detective and current crime writer, spoke about how Poirot’s help, even in the ’20s, would have been refused. He insisted he’d arrest Poirot today for interfering with an investigation and muddying the evidence.

Then, the man you’ve all been waiting for, David Suchet. Michael Aspel invited him to take the other, empty chair on the stage. And just in time too! A moment later, what looked like a stage light fell right where Suchet had been sitting. Except the rest of the audience didn’t look anxious or afraid enough when the light came down and began smoking. Where were scurrying techs and stagehands with fire extinguishers? This might have been planned for dramatic effect. I couldn’t tell.

Finally, Dr. Stephen Leadbetter, noted forensic pathologist, came armed with props. He discussed reality versus murders in books and how much books got wrong. He also admitted those caveats all went away because Agatha’s novel, The Pale Horse (1961) had such a good description of thallium poisoning, that a thallium poisoning victim was saved from certain death. His presentation was cut short when the documentary abruptly ended in mid-sentence. According to VHSWonderland, who put the video on YouTube, there were four more minutes of Dr. Leadbetter talking, followed by Michael Aspel wrapping up the show, and the closing credits.

I don’t know why the show was called The Trouble with Agatha Christie, other than to get an audience to tune in. Think of it as ’90s clickbait. The two guests who had the most issues with Agatha were Dr. Clare (a TV shrink so you shouldn’t be surprised when he shocks to keep his ratings up) and Graham Ison, former Scotland Yard detective and current crime writer. I’d never heard of Ison before, no surprise there, and I’d bet that much of his complaints were sour grapes because he’ll never sell or be remembered like Agatha.

The episode is a stroll down memory lane of once famous but now forgotten people. And who’s not forgotten among them? Why Agatha herself, naturally. The people who have trouble with her do so because they want to make a name for themselves.