What does it take to craft a writing course by the bestselling novelist of all time?
This groundbreaking course was carefully created over two years by a team of almost 100 people, including academics, researchers, creative professionals, and a team of leading global Agatha Christie scholars, who have each studied Agatha’s written and spoken words and who curated the course to reflect all her teachings.
What happened behind the scenes is just as fascinating as what made the final cut. Step into the making of Agatha Christie’s Writing course – where innovation, technology and literary magic all come together.
Where did it begin?
Almost two years ago, BBC Maestro’s CEO Michael Levine sat in front of James Prichard, Agatha Christie’s great grandson, sharing an incredible vision to honour the novelist’s legacy.
“I was there to pitch an idea so outlandish that I had already booked a taxi to pick me up 30 minutes after the meeting start time, having been told the meeting would not likely last more than 15 minutes,” says Michael Levine.
As a writer and producer for over 25 years, he found himself entirely star-struck.
“This was the offspring of my life-long hero. No other writer has come close to engaging me as much, no other writer has influenced me as much.”
“I was in with James for almost two hours,” he says. “He plied me with questions, thoughts, challenges, at the end of which, he stared straight at me and after a pause that stretched past the hour, said ‘I like this’.”
Assembling the team
To get this right, the project needed the expertise of specialists across many fields. It would require the work of academics, researchers, education experts, producers, a film crew, a stellar actress, set designers, hair and make-up artists, and the innovation of cutting-edge post-production and VFX experts. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration and full support of Agatha Christie Limited.
This team would work together to bring Christie’s voice, wisdom, and presence to life in a way never seen — or heard — before.
Decoding Christie: crafting the course
How do you craft a writing course that truly captures Christie’s learnings? It starts with an elite team of literary detectives: specialist Agatha Christie academics, researchers, and scholars.
Behind the course content is Dr. Mark Aldridge, an academic, speaker and historian, specialising in the world of Agatha Christie, Dr J.C. Berthnal — a Christie specialist, expert in language Professor Michelle Kazmer and writer, Gray Robert Brown. Together, they examined Christie’s writings — her manuscripts and letters, and interviews – to extract an array of her views and her opinions on how to write.
“One of the big concerns at the beginning was whether there would be enough original material to make up a complete course,” says Dr Mark Aldridge. “But I was sure there would be, having spent well over a decade researching Agatha Christie’s works.”
“It was essential to all of us that we used Christie’s words as much as possible, with the core of the script coming from Christie herself. We only added material that was unambiguously factual, such as citing examples of where Christie uses particular methods in her writing.”
“Over time, everybody got more and more excited by the possibilities. I was given everything we needed — an excellent team to work with, and the time we needed to get this right.”
A new era of casting: The search for the Agatha actor
Bringing this project to life meant finding someone to step into the shoes of Agatha Christie herself.
This actress wouldn’t just play a role, she needed to embody Christie’s presence, teaching each lesson and imparting her wisdom. On top of that, there had to also be some physical similarities to ensure a likeness in the final edit.
After an 18-month casting process and 150 auditions, the role went to seasoned actor Vivien Keene.
“This job was absolutely unlike any other that I have had in 44 years of acting!” says Keene. “I believe that the casting directors had to scan hundreds of actresses’ faces in order to try and find the correct biometrics, so that the visual effects process could be put on top of that to create Christie’s face.”
Actors submitted self-tapes that had to be filmed straight-on, to ensure the visual enhancement process would be as seamless as possible.
“It felt more collaborative than any other audition that I’d done.” – Vivien Keene, Actor
As a fan of Christie’s work and having previously performed in two of her adaptations –the Mousetrap and Go Back for Murder – this wasn’t the first time Keene had stepped into Christie’s world. But she had never played Agatha Christie herself.
“There is hardly any footage of Agatha Christie,” says Keene. “Anything captured was mostly from the front, so I had to watch the existing clips over and over, in order to try and extract mannerisms that I may be able to replicate.” Keene also studied all the works that Agatha’s grandson, Mathew, had produced about his grandmother. It was here she gauged a real sense of Agatha’s “shyness, her intelligence, her great sense of humour and, indeed, her feistiness.”
Bringing Christie to life: Costume, hair & make-up design
“Assembling the team for this project, was unique for BBC Maestro. We used the same filming crew, but there was a whole new set of people who we’d not used before — wardrobe, hair, make up,” says BBC Maestro Creative Director, Eli Hourd.
For costume, we embarked on the help of costume designer, Olivia Birch.
“She had a very strong image,” says Birch, after studying old photographs and footage. “I would place her at the late 1940s. She was — like a lot of women — loyal to the fashion of the times she was in.”
“Looking at pictures of Agatha Christie, we often see her with the same pearl studs, the same pearl necklace, and the delicate watch, they become a part of uniform.”
Birch began to put together mood boards of costume ideas. It became apparent that Christie was quite practical in her fashion, and smartly dressed.
Because she was so detail-focussed in her writing, it makes sense that she would be so detail-focussed in how she put herself together as well.
The final wardrobe featured a skirt suit, pearl earrings and necklace, a broach to sit on the lapel of her jacket and a watch.
The biggest challenge? “Because the pieces are period, I had to alter things quite a bit. And Vivien is quite tall, so finding something that would work with her height was a challenge.”
“I looked at the photographs and tried to decode how she would’ve had her hair,” says hair and make up designer, Elizabeth Hedley. “I know she [Christie] had a lot of references towards 1930s, but because we were shooting in the ’60s I had to make a hybrid hairstyle.”
They started with a wig fitting, finding a colour match to Vivien’s natural hair. “We used the front of Vivien’s hair, married in with a wig, to give that natural finish at the front, because we knew the visual effects would pick up detail,” says Hedley.
Make-up, by contrast, was kept minimal. The team focused less on traditional techniques, since Agatha’s likeness would later be digitally mapped onto Vivien’s. Instead, the priority was reducing shine to support the visual effects and ensuring Vivien felt comfortable and confident in the role. “We ended up doing a natural base,” Hedley explains.
Designing Agatha’s world: The set
“I felt an extra level of care and respect should be put into this project,” says set designer, Carrie Southall. “Rather than recreate an authentic reproduction of where she might’ve worked — her library or study — we felt that it was more important to create a more poetic atmosphere for her, that draws on various elements of her world.”
Southall and her team researched the period in detail, sourcing authentic touches — drapes, lamps, artwork — and even found a replica of the typewriter Christie used. Alongside these, they introduced symbolic details, like tying papers with red ribbon to subtly suggest a trickle of blood.
It was important, Southall says, that Agatha’s environment felt real: a desk she could sit at, papers she could handle, shadowy books lining the shelves. “We wanted to give her a space she could truly inhabit.”
The artistry of visual effects: bringing Christie to life on screen
How do you recreate the likeness of a literary icon with almost no video footage? Visual effects artist Thiago Porto tackled one of the most unique challenges in film — mapping Christie’s likeness onto an actor’s using cutting-edge visual technology.
“Recreating Christie was a unique challenge since we had almost no video footage of her and only a limited number of less than 10 licensed photos.” says Porto. “We had to carefully study every available detail to capture her likeness authentically. We then trained our technology to learn her facial features, expressions, and movements based on these images.”
The real test was ensuring that every nuance — from subtle facial expressions to the way light interacted with her features — felt natural and authentic. Achieving this level of detail required a blend of technological precision and human artistry, pushing the limits of what visual effects could achieve.
“The greatest responsibility was knowing that we would be presenting our work to Christie’s own family,” says Porto. “They know her best, so we had to be meticulous in preserving her likeness and respectfully bringing her back to life on screen.”
Crafting Christie’s voice
Creating the voice for Agatha Christie wasn’t simple either. It required the expertise of Respeecher, an ethical voice technology company, and a team of skilled sound engineers.
Using speech-to-speech conversion, they took Vivien Keene’s performance and transformed it into Christie’s voice, ensuring it felt authentic and natural. But the human element remained essential throughout this process.
“It’s important to note that, despite the common misconception, technology doesn’t remove the human element from the voice cloning process, especially when it comes to speech-to-speech conversion,” says Natalia Statyvka from Respeecher. “Technology cannot create the distinguished performance that a human actor can.”
The biggest hurdle to overcome? Making the voice sound real, rather than like an old vinyl recording. “This result wasn’t easy to achieve because we needed to craft a natural sound and convey her authentic accent while working with far-from-perfect recorded audio data,” says Statyvka.
The end result: a course like no other
This course delivers something previously unthinkable: a front-row seat to Christie’s creative process. It’s a chance to step into her world, uncover the secrets of her craft, and learn to write with the same precision, suspense, and unparalleled flair that defines her legacy.
For James Prichard, Christie’s great-grandson and CEO of Agatha Christie Limited, the course is more than just an educational tool, it’s a rare opportunity to hear the queen of crime fiction share her wisdom firsthand: “The team of academics and researchers that BBC Maestro has assembled have extracted from all of her writings an extraordinary array of her views and opinions on how to write. Through this course, you will truly receive a lesson of crafting a masterful mystery, in Agatha’s very own words.”
At its core, this course represents the very mission of BBC Maestro — to provide people with the chance to learn from the greatest minds in history.
Our CEO, Michael Levine, reflects on the significance of this project:
“BBC Maestro was established to offer the next generation of talent a way to get started, to learn, not from teachers, but from those who have done it themselves. To be inspired by learning from the greatest. As an 11-year-old boy reading Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? I could never have imagined that one day, I’d be sitting across from Agatha Christie, teaching me how she did it.”
Master the art of mystery – learn the rules of the game
Agatha Christie didn’t just write crime fiction; she defined the genre. In this course, you’ll uncover the essential “rules of the game” that made her stories so compelling. From crafting airtight plots to placing clues with precision, you’ll learn the techniques that keep readers guessing until the very last page.
Build unforgettable characters – from detectives to villains
What makes a great detective? How do you create a criminal mastermind? Agatha Christie was a master of character development, from the meticulous Hercule Poirot to the sharp-witted Miss Marple. This course breaks down her approach to building believable, intriguing characters, ensuring that every hero, suspect, and villain serves a purpose in your mystery.
The anatomy of a perfect crime – plot, clues & resolution
Great crime fiction is more than just suspense – it’s a delicate balance of structure, pacing, and deception. Agatha Christie’s work is a blueprint for the perfect whodunit, and in this course, you’ll learn how to weave together plots, settings, and resolutions that grip your audience. Discover how to lay clues, mislead readers, and deliver endings they’ll never see coming.
Ready to learn from the most successful novelist of all time? Discover the secrets behind her legendary mysteries in this groundbreaking course. Sign up for a free lesson below today and start writing like the Queen of mystery herself.
