A new Agatha Christie series is officially following in Sherlock‘s footsteps. Few writers have influenced crime fiction as much as Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. For more than a century — Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes adventure was written in 1887, while Christie’s debut Hercule Poirot novel was published in 1920 — their stories and characters have transformed an entire genre, inspiring writers and artists to adapt, reinterpret, and reimagine their most twisting, confounding, and exciting mysteries.
And yet, for decades, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie adaptations were set in the characters’ and authors’ respective eras. Sherlock Holmes remained firmly rooted in the Victorian period; sleuths like Christie’s Poirot, Miss Marple, and even her underrated detective duo, Tommy and Tuppence, lived out their on-screen lives in the 20th century. It wasn’t until Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat teamed up with the BBC in 2010 for the global phenomenon Sherlock that it became clear these classic stories could be adapted for the modern age.
Now, nine years after Sherlock‘s (somewhat divisive) ending, Agatha Christie’s work is finally getting the same treatment in BritBox’s groundbreaking new series, Tommy & Tuppence.
Sherlock Revolutionized Arthur Conan Doyle’s Detective
Sherlock and Watson in The Hounds of Baskervilles in BBC SherlockImage via MovieStillsDB
More than any other Sherlock Holmes adaptation, the BBC’s Sherlock revolutionized Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective. It didn’t just create a new investigator and slap the Sherlock Holmes label on him; it actively reworked the character’s backstory, relationships, and eccentricities for the 21st century. His interest in science was more forensic than experimental. His drug and smoking habits changed. His remarks and observations, and his interactions with other characters made sense in the context of present-day London, especially his dynamic with John Watson.
Crucially, though, the character still felt like Sherlock Holmes — the arrogance, the determination, the quick wit, and unique perspective were all still there, recognizable even when he was unlocking password-protected cell phones and refusing to wear his iconic hat. Conan Doyle’s stories and ideas, especially in the early seasons, were still discernible, too, updated for a modern audience. Everything worked; the show even inspired other 21st-century Holmes adaptations, including, of course, NBC’s excellent seven-season procedural, Elementary. Sherlock proved that Conan Doyle’s work was timeless and universal.
From Baker Street to the Reichenbach · Eight Questions How Well Do You Know Sherlock Holmes? “When you have eliminated the impossible…”
🔎The MagnifierObserve, don’t see
👼Pipe & TobaccoThree-pipe problem
🏯Baker Street221B
🕷️MoriartyNapoleon of Crime
📱Modern SherlockHigh-functioning sociopath
01
Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887 and went on to feature in four novels and 56 short stories — a body of work fans call “the Canon.” The Edinburgh-born author who created him was a practising physician before fiction made him famous, and was knighted in 1902 for unrelated journalistic work on the Boer War. Name him.
✓ Correct! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). He trained at Edinburgh under Dr Joseph Bell — whose almost theatrical diagnostic deductions were the direct model for Holmes’ method — before failing to make a living from medicine and turning to fiction. Doyle wrote four Holmes novels and 56 short stories between 1887 and 1927, plus a parallel career in historical novels and spiritualism advocacy. He was knighted in 1902 for his pamphlet defending Britain’s conduct in the Boer War, not for the Holmes stories.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone, The Woman in White) is the great Victorian sensation novelist and an influence on the genre, but didn’t create Holmes. Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin (in Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841) is the prototype for the rational-detective genre and an open influence on Doyle. Chesterton wrote Father Brown. Holmes is Conan Doyle’s.
02
Holmes and Watson share rooms above Mrs Hudson’s lodgings at the most famous fictional address in literature — so famous that for decades the Abbey National Building Society employed a full-time secretary to answer letters sent to it. What is the address?
✓ Correct! 221B Baker Street — an address that didn’t exist when Doyle invented it (Baker Street numbering originally only ran into the lower hundreds). When the road was renumbered in the 20th century, the address fell within the Abbey National Building Society’s building — and so the bank employed a permanent “secretary to Sherlock Holmes” to answer the thousands of letters that arrived from fans every year. The Sherlock Holmes Museum now occupies the next-door property and uses the 221B address with City of Westminster permission.
✗ Wrong. The answer is 221B Baker Street. The “B” matters — it indicates the upper-floor flat above Mrs Hudson’s ground-floor rooms. Doyle picked the number when no real 221 existed; today, the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 239 Baker Street is officially permitted to use the 221B address.
03
Doyle’s first Holmes novel was published as the centrepiece of the 1887 issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual, where Doyle was paid £25 for the full copyright. It introduces Watson, narrates the meeting with Holmes at St Bart’s laboratory and pivots into a long Mormon-Utah backstory. Name the novel.
✓ Correct! A Study in Scarlet (1887). Doyle wrote it in three weeks while waiting for medical patients who never arrived at his Southsea practice. The first half is the now-iconic introduction (Watson’s wound from the Battle of Maiwand, the chemistry lab, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive”); the second half pivots without warning to a Western-set Mormon revenge backstory in Utah. Beeton’s Christmas Annual sold out, and only 11 surviving copies of the magazine are known to exist today — making them among the most valuable items in modern book collecting.
✗ Wrong. The answer is A Study in Scarlet. The Sign of the Four (1890) is the second novel. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02) is the third and most-famous — serialised in the Strand and frequently topped Holmes-novel polls. The Valley of Fear (1914–15) is the fourth and last. The very first Holmes work is A Study in Scarlet, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual 1887.
04
John H. Watson narrates almost the entire Holmes Canon and is Holmes’ flatmate, biographer and friend. When the two meet in A Study in Scarlet, Watson is recovering at a London hotel from a wound received at the Battle of Maiwand — a clue to his profession in the British Army. What was Watson’s profession?
✓ Correct! Army surgeon — specifically Assistant Surgeon, attached to the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers and then the Berkshires during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Watson took a Jezail bullet at Maiwand (July 27, 1880), was rescued by his orderly Murray and shipped home on a wound pension of 11 shillings and sixpence a day. The war wound is variously located in his shoulder or his leg across the Canon — Doyle famously didn’t keep his own continuity straight. Watson is a working medical doctor throughout the series.
✗ Wrong. The answer is army surgeon — Watson is a medical doctor (the “Dr” in “Dr Watson” is hard-earned). He served with the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers in Afghanistan, took a Jezail bullet at Maiwand and shipped home on a small wound pension. He runs a private medical practice during much of the Canon, often near Paddington.
05
In December 1893’s Strand Magazine, an exhausted Doyle attempted to kill off Holmes by sending him over a Swiss waterfall locked in mortal struggle with Professor Moriarty. Public reaction was apocalyptic; mourners reportedly wore black armbands in the City. After ten years of pressure, Doyle resurrected him in “The Empty House” (1903). Name the falls.
✓ Correct! Reichenbach Falls, near Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland — which Doyle had visited the year before and chose specifically as a setting dramatic enough to retire Holmes. The story “The Final Problem” ends with Watson finding only Holmes’ cigarette case, alpenstock and a farewell note. Doyle was so determined to be done that he wrote “Killed Holmes” in his diary. Public mourning was so intense (over 20,000 Strand readers cancelled subscriptions) that he caved a decade later. “The Empty House” (1903) reveals Holmes survived by tossing Moriarty alone over the edge.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Reichenbach Falls. Niagara is American/Canadian. The Trummelbach Falls (also in Switzerland, in fact) and the Rhine Falls are real but not the Holmes setting. Doyle set the “death” specifically at the Reichenbach Falls near Meiringen — today a Sherlock Holmes pilgrimage destination with its own museum and statue.
06
Holmes calls his arch-nemesis “the Napoleon of Crime” — a former mathematics professor with a treatise on the binomial theorem to his name, now operating an invisible criminal syndicate that runs through London like a spider’s web. He appears in just two stories of the Canon but looms over the entire mythos. Name him.
✓ Correct! Professor James Moriarty. He explicitly appears in just two Canon stories — “The Final Problem” (1893) and the prequel novel The Valley of Fear (1914–15) — and is mentioned in five others, but his cultural footprint is enormous. Doyle modelled the “Napoleon of Crime” phrase on Scotland Yard’s real-life nickname for Adam Worth, a 19th-century international thief who funded London’s underworld from a fashionable mews flat.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Professor James Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran is Moriarty’s lieutenant — Holmes calls him “the second most dangerous man in London” — and is the trigger man in “The Empty House.” Charles Augustus Milverton is the blackmailer of his own self-titled story. Irene Adler is Holmes’ intellectual rival from “A Scandal in Bohemia” (memorably called “the woman” by Holmes). Moriarty is the explicit arch-nemesis.
07
The BBC’s contemporary-set Sherlock — created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson — debuted with the episode “A Study in Pink,” updating Doyle’s first novel for a London of mobile phones and military Afghanistan. The show won 7 Emmys across its run. In which year did it premiere?
✓ Correct! 2010 — July 25, BBC One, “A Study in Pink.” The series was famously short-format-by-design (just three 90-minute episodes per season, four seasons, 2010–17, plus the one-off “Abominable Bride” special) and was the project that propelled Cumberbatch from supporting roles into Doctor Strange and Hollywood A-list status. The show’s “A Study in Pink” pilot was actually shot a year earlier in 2009 but was substantially reworked and reshot for broadcast.
✗ Wrong. The answer is 2010. 2008 is when Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat first pitched the show. 2012 is when CBS’s competing American adaptation Elementary (with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu) launched. 2014 is when BBC’s Sherlock Season 3 aired. The show’s first broadcast was July 25, 2010.
08
One of the four phrases below is the world’s most-quoted Holmes line — and yet it never appears anywhere in the 60 stories of the Canon. Holmes does say each of its components separately, but the famous combined version was popularised by adaptations decades after Doyle’s last story. Name the phantom phrase.
✓ Correct! “Elementary, my dear Watson” never appears in the Canon. Holmes does say “Elementary” on its own (in “The Crooked Man”) and “my dear Watson” many times, but the combined phrase was popularised first by P.G. Wodehouse’s 1909 novel Psmith, Journalist and then cemented as a Holmes catchphrase by the 1929 Clive Brook film The Return of Sherlock Holmes — Hollywood’s first sound-era Holmes adaptation. Basil Rathbone’s 14-film cycle (1939–46) made it standard. The other three lines are real Canon quotes.
✗ Wrong. The answer is “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Holmes says “The game is afoot” (it’s a Henry V quote, used in “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange”), “You know my methods” (in The Sign of the Four and elsewhere) and refers to “a three-pipe problem” (in “The Red-Headed League”). The combined “Elementary, my dear Watson” was popularised by adaptations — Wodehouse used it in 1909, the 1929 Clive Brook film cemented it — but Doyle himself never wrote it.
The Case File · Final Verdict Your Detective Standing
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Master of Baker Street — or just a confused Lestrade?
The same is true of BritBox’s Tommy & Tuppence. The six-episode series, which premiered on September 15, reinvents Christie’s iconic, romantically involved detective duo in the author’s first contemporary English-language adaptation. In the show, Tommy and Tuppence are exes reunited at a wedding when, as is to be expected, one of the guests is brutally murdered. What follows is a whirlwind adventure involving three separate murder investigations, as actress Tuppence and crime novelist Tommy try to revive his aunt’s detective agency, Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives.
They’re the ultimate amateur sleuths, using their combined, complementary talents to sniff out the clues the police have missed (or outright refuse to consider), as they reignite their friendship and feelings for one another. Much like Benedict Cumberbatch’s updated portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, Josh Dylan and Antonia Thomas capture Tommy and Tuppence’s youthful spirit, tenacity, and enthusiasm, representing Christie’s characters with care while treating them as believable 21st-century 30-something Londoners, fascinated by true crime.
Tommy & Tuppence Could Ignite A New Wave Of Modern Christie Adaptations
Josh Dylan as Tommy and Antonia Thomas as Tuppence in BritBox’s Tommy & TuppenceCredit: Lara Cornell/Courtesy of BritBox
Unlike Arthur Conan Doyle, Christie created numerous iconic sleuths, and all of them could potentially benefit from a 21st-century makeover. While it might seem strange to picture Hercule Poirot getting a coffee in a modern-day café, it was equally difficult to picture Sherlock Holmes riding around London in a modern black cab before Sherlock, too. A contemporary Miss Marple prequel, akin to Nancy Drew or A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, could be really fun to watch, especially now that Poirot will be getting the (20th-century) prequel treatment as well.
Alternatively, writers and producers could rediscover and reintroduce one of Christie’s lesser-known, one-off detectives, too. A character like Anne Beddingfeld from The Man in the Brown Suit could be a great modern heroine in a globe-trotting thriller. The Seven Dials Mystery‘s Bundle Brent, just as tenacious and energetic as Tommy and Tuppence, could easily transition into the present (though it will be hard to match Mia McKenna-Bruce’s performance in Netflix’s Seven Dials miniseries). An updated adaptation of The Sittaford Mystery could give Emily Trefusis a bigger role.
Amateur detectives are all the rage nowadays; just look at Tommy & Tuppence, Only Murders in the Building, Ludwig, and Death Valley. Agatha Christie’s got plenty of them. Bring on the modern era.
The first two episodes of Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence are streaming now, only on BritBox. New episodes arrive weekly on Tuesdays.
