BBC uses AI to launch writing classes from ‘Queen of Crime’ Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie, the so-called ‘Queen of Crime,’ has been brought back to life using AI technology as part of a new collaboration between BBC Studios and Agatha Christie Limited.

Agatha Christie

The author – the biggest selling novelist of all time – died in 1976. But she will now offer aspiring crime writers the chance to learn some of her storytelling secrets, in her own words, through a new course called Agatha Christie Writing available on the BBC Maestro service.

The course was created using archival interviews, private letters and writings researched by a team of Christie experts to provide budding authors with the opportunity to discover her approach to the art of suspense, plot twists and unforgettable characters.

Viewers will also see and hear Christie impart her own words of wisdom through a marriage of traditional production and new AI techniques that have been used to recreate her voice and likeness.

BBC Maestro partnered with actor Vivien Keene, who played Christie on a set and read the script based on the work of Christie experts and approved by Christie’s family. Visual effects artists then used AI technology, licensed images and carefully restored audio recordings to overlay Christie’s appearance and voice onto Keene’s presentation.

The course has been curated by leading Christie scholars Dr Mark Aldridge, Michelle Kazmer, Gray Robert Brown and Jamie Bernthal-Hooker.

James Prichard, Christie’s great-grandson and chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Limited, said: “The team of academics and researchers that BBC Maestro has assembled have extracted from a number of her writings an extraordinary array of her views and opinions on how to write. Through this course, you truly will receive a lesson in crafting a masterful mystery, in Agatha’s very own words.”

BBC Maestro CEO Michael Levine said: “BBC Maestro was established to offer the next generation of talent a way to get started, to learn, not from teachers, but from those who have done it themselves. To be inspired by learning from the greatest. As an 11-year-old boy reading Why Didn’t they Ask Evans?, I could never have imagined that one day I’d be watching Agatha Christie teaching me how she did it.”

Visual effects artist Thiago Porto added: “With only a handful of photographs and no video footage, we had to carefully study every available detail to capture her likeness authentically. Vivien’s performance was the foundation, and through precise craftsmanship and meticulous attention to historical accuracy, we worked to ensure every frame reflected the essence of who she was.”

Christie has sold more than two billion books, having written 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections.