The BBC & BritBox’s ‘Poirot’ Reboot Finds Its Detective
Our new Hercule Poirot is here, and we are officially seated.
There has been quite a bit of rumbling in the last few weeks that the BBC was prepping a return to long-running mystery-of-the-week Agatha Christie. Her great-grandson, James Pritchard, has been openly pushing to bring back Miss Marple since mid-2025 or so, so it was a bit of a surprise when word began to circulate that the BBC was working with Mammoth Screen to reboot Poirot instead. However, without an actor attached to play the detective, it was hard to judge where this might be going. The real question was what age range the series would aim for.
Now that we have a lead actor in the role, it seems the BBC wants to recreate the Suchet years for a new generation. The new series will be called Hercule, with Edward Bluemel (My Lady Jane) as the new Belgian detective.
David Suchet is, of course, the defining Hercule Poirot of our time, and was in his early 40s when he took on the role, having recently starred in a Poirot film (Thirteen at Dinner) as Inspector Japp before being offered the job. (Bluemel notably just starred in Netflix’s remake of The Seven Dials.) The Poirot that Suchet played appeared, at least in the early going, to be in his early to mid-30s, though part of the appeal of the ITV series was the character’s timelessness – he was vaguely ageless, somehow older than the average viewer, yet not at all middle-aged. With the 30-something Bluemel officially cast, the new Poirot isn’t actually aiming that much younger. It is, however, aiming much hotter.
Here’s the series synopsis, which will treat Season 1 like a complete reboot of the Poirot origin story:
The series is an intimate study of Hercule the man and an epic portrait of Britain between the wars. The series takes a magnifying glass to three of Christie’s most celebrated stories, while also charting Hercule’s burgeoning friendship with Captain Arthur Hastings, his early encounters with Scotland Yard’s James Japp, and introducing him to one particular nemesis…
It is hard to accept a new Poirot while Suchet lives and breathes, but others have done decent jobs, including (but not limited to!) John Malkovich, Alfred Molina, Ian Holm, Albert Finney, and Peter Ustinov. (Kenneth Branagh’s embarrassingly bad version, which unfortunately has been front and center the last few years, is actually an outlier.) On his casting, Bluemel stated in the press release: “I feel very lucky to have been trusted with such an iconic character who has been played by so many great actors. I can’t wait to continue Hercule’s legacy.”
The rest of the cast is expected to be announced in due course. The six-part series will be written by Benji Walters (Code of Silence), with director Jonny Campbell (Am I Being Unreasonable) helming the first two episodes and Charlie Palmer as producer. Walters and Campbell executive produce alongside Prichard for Agatha Christie Limited, Rebecca Durbin & Damien Timmer for Mammoth Screen, Nick Lambon for the BBC, and Robert Schildhouse, Jon Farrar & Stephen Nye for BritBox.
Filming for Hercule will take place in Liverpool in the summer of 2026. The new series is expected to premiere on the BBC and BritBox in 2027.
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