Doctor Who Vs. Agatha Christie, Part 1

"Loss-of-memory cases are rare, but occasionally

genuine" The Disappearance of Mr. Dagenham (1924)

First screened in September 2004, BBC2 celebrated the life and

career of the Queen of Crime (1890-1976) with the drama, A Life

in Pictures.

Agatha's story was told in flashback, from her perspective at two

distinct times in her life - through the sessions with her psychiatrist (following her disappearance in 1926), and then via interviews at the

tenth anniversary of The Mousetrap in 1962. Much of the film focused

on her notorious disappearance, after her first husband Archie Christie

 had asked Agatha (portrayed by Olivia Williams) for a divorce. Whilst

some contemporary commentators suggested a publicity stunt, the

doctor here concluded that the writer had experienced a fugue state,

 and her amnesia was genuine. In 1999, Hercule Poirot and the Disappearing Novelist (part of BBC2's documentary series, The Great Detective) also supported that diagnosis.

Sky Arts' Agatha Christie Vs. Hercule Poirot later examined the

novelist's flight in the context of the reception to her latest work,

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Gareth Roberts' story, The Unicorn and the Wasp also depicted the

events (albeit fictional) leading up to Agatha's flight. By the end of

 the episode, the action had moved from the Queen of Crime's

atypical setting - the English country house - to Silent Pool, where

her car was actually found abandoned. Here, the Doctor deduced

 that the incident caused Agatha's memory loss.

A Life in Pictures (last repeated by the BBC in 2008, then shown

on Drama in 2019) is now available on Britbox - it featured Mark

Gatiss, Bonnie Wright, and seven Doctor Who cast and crew

connections:

• Anna [Raymond] Massey (Older Agatha here; Narrator of Death on the Nile, 1976; Miss Pebmarsh in The Clocks) voiced Miss Pollard for Big Finish's The Girl Who Never Was (2007)
• Raymond [Anthony] Coulthard (Archie Christie here; Raymond West for The Case of the Perfect Maid) voiced Loki, Edgar and Hawks for Cobwebs (2010), Ralph and Acolyte for Suburban Hell (2015), and Robac, Servers and Dalmari for The Destination Wars (2017)
• Anthony O'Donnell (Kenward/Poirot) was Commander Kaagh in The Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy of the Bane and The Last Sontaran
• Bertie [born Robert] Carvel (Max Mallowan here; Osborne in The Pale Horse, 2020) was the Mysterious Man in The Lazarus Experiment
• Olivia Darnley (Nurse here; Cherry in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, 2010) voiced Emily Cole for Prisoner of the Ood (2018), and made a cameo appearance in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot
• Tim McMullan (Pharmacist here; Meredith in The Witness for the Prosecution, 2016) voiced the Eight for Doom Coalition 3 (2016)
• Mick Pantaleo was also the first assistant director on A Christmas Carol, The Doctor's Wife and Night Terror, then producer on Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar and Agatha and the Midnight Murders

The Mysterious Case of Agatha Christie (part of Sky's Urban

Myths strand) aired in April 2018, and featured seven other

Doctor Who links:

• Anna [born Charlotte] Maxwell Martin (Christie here; Sophia for Crooked House, 2008; Ethel in And Then There Were None, 2015) was Suki Macrae Cantrell in The Long Game, then voiced Maddie Bower for The Diary of River Song 2 (2016)
• Bill Paterson (Conan Doyle here; Bradley in The Pale Horse, 2010) was Dr. Edwin Bracewell in Victory of the Daleks and The Pandorica Opens
• Rosie Cavaliero (Dorothy L Sayers here; Bunch for Sanctuary & Tape-Measure Murder) voiced Cassie Schofield for Project: Twilight (2001) and Project: Lazarus (2003), and Marge Ellmore for Infamy of the Zaross (2017)
• Mark Bonnar (Billy here; Alfred for 4.50 from Paddington, 1997) was Jimmy in The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People, then voiced Heath Porteus for The English Way of Death (2015), Zoltan Frid for The Labyrinth of Buda Castle (2016), and the Eleven for Doom Coalition, Ravenous, Dark Universe (2020) and UNIT: Nemesis 1 (2021)
• Adrian [Philip] Scarborough (Danders) was Kahler Jex in A Town Called Mercy and The Making of the Gunslinger, and voiced Rupert Von Thal for The Boy That Time Forgot (2008)
• Tor Clark (Angela) was a Teacher in Let's Kill Hitler
• Alex Kaye Besley was second assistant director on The Shakespeare Code too