'Tommy & Tuppence' Will Become Modern Partners in Crime for BritBox

It is accepted conventional wisdom that Agatha Christie has three major sleuths in her canon: Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, and Tommy & Tuppence Beresford. Poirot and Marple are obvious candidates, as both appear in upwards of dozens of novels and short stories; however, Tommy & Tuppence's popularity is really only due to their being a pair of bright young things, allowing productions to cast attractive young leads in TV adaptations, instead of a short dude with a funny mustache or a little old lady. Now the couple is being brought back for a third series, reset in the present day and renamed from the traditional Partners in Crime to Tommy & Tuppence.

The Beresford couple would be a small artifact in the Christie universe if one were to go by on-page appearances. Poor Mr Satterthwaite and Parker Pyne, heroes of more than a dozen short stories, are barely known outside the hardcore fandom; the same goes for Superintendent Battle, who has six novels to Tommy & Tuppence's five, and yet is unknown because everyone always cuts him out of the on-screen adaptations of his own stories. (Rude!)

However, Satterthwaite, Pyne, and Battle have never led a serialized Christie adaptation. Tommy & Tuppence have been on PBS since the 1980s, first portrayed by James Warwick (Babylon 5) and Francesca Annis (The Forsytes) in Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime, and then by David Walliams (Great Expectations) and Jessica Raine (Call the Midwife) in the 2010s.