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# 6 Adaptation and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

With the development of cinema in the 1930s and 40s and later the arrival of television, the whodunnit, alongside other subgenres of crime fiction, found new mass media forms. Not all literary genres lend themselves to adaptation, but with their suspenseful plotting, and their dramatic emphasis on character and narrative and (often visual) clues, detective fictions such as Christie’s seemed almost perfectly designed for the big, and small, screen. If you live in the UK, you will be aware of the numerous adaptations of Agatha Christie’s detective fictions that are almost a fixture of UK TV programming, and in the final section of this course, you will look at one of these adaptations from ITV’s series Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989–2013).

## Activity 2

Watch this clip from ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, adapted for the long-running and highly acclaimed ITV series, Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989–2013), starring David Suchet. Then, answer the questions that follow.

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Transcript

1. How successful are the screen writers in adapting a supposedly un-adaptable novel for the small screen, based on this scene and their handling of the killer’s revelation?
2. What decisions might they have made differently, in terms of structure, form and characterisation?
3. How essential are the period-specific features, as represented in Agatha Christie’s Poirot?
4. Can you envisage this story set in a different period or setting? Suggest one possible scenario using a different historical context.

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OpenLearn - Agatha Christie and the golden age of detective fiction
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