The BBC & BritBox Announce Agatha Christie's 'Endless Night' Adaptation

It only took the BBC five years and three Agatha Christie adaptations before it returned to its most recent primary adaptor of Christie novels, Sarah Phelps (The Sixth Commandment). Phelps made herself into something of a U.K. household name after she did a run of five Christie adaptations in five years for Auntie Beeb between 2015 and 2020, the first adaptations to be released post-David Suchet's retirement from ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot and Julie McKenzie hanging up her Agatha Christie's Marple hat. Now she's picking the pen back up to adapt her sixth Christie story, Endless Night, the first to debut on BritBox.

The most recent spate of Christie miniseries has been made in conjunction with BritBox; however, until the last run, there's no single artist as a throughline, all that ties them together is that the BBC, BritBox, and the Christie estate are involved. Why Didn't They Ask Evans was a Hugh Laurie passion project, Murder Is Easy was the brainchild of Sian Martin (who went on to create Inspector Ellis), and the most recent, Towards Zero, was a joint project between director Sam Yates and World on Fire writer Rachel Bennette. Until now, the only thing the stories had in common was that they were "Superintendent Battle Books with Battle removed," but Endless Night doesn't even have that to tie it back.

Instead, Endless Night is part of Christie's collection of "detective-free novels," much like the ones Phelps chose to adapt previously (only one of her five adaptations featured one of Christie's famous figures). Without a Marple/Poirot/Beresford to anchor them, most of Phelps' adaptations failed to find an audience in the U.S.; however, that is as much due to most of them streaming on Amazon Prime (BritBox didn't exist yet in 2015), which at the time was aping Netflix's "If we don't market it, they'll show up anyway" method, leaving Phelps' Christies to sit unwatched.