Did I miss something or was there really no flashy new all-star Agatha Christie adaptation on TV over Christmas?

Some festive traditions are sacrosanct in my book and that’s one of them. You can keep your MR James ghost story – I want my Agatha Christie murder case.

I know there were Christie re-runs because I re-ran one myself, 2018 three-parter Ordeal By Innocence. It starred Bill Nighy, Anna Chancellor and Morvern Christie, and as well as having been filmed around Inverkip was notable for having large numbers of scenes re-shot with a different actor due to sexual assault allegations made against a cast member post-production.

There were old Christie films too, among them 1957 curio Witness For The Prosecution. Directed by the great Billy Wilder, it stars the equally great Marlene Dietrich alongside Charles Laughton and Bride Of Frankenstein’s Elsa Lanchester, and is based on one of the writer’s stage plays. She being an early adopter of the re-use/re-cycle mantra, the play was in turn based on a short story. But of new Agatha Christie adaptations I saw not hide, hair nor cocktail dress.

I only ask because 2024 was my self-appointed Year of Agatha. I had never read her before, you see, clearly a miss on my part. So last January I picked up The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, thought by many to be her masterpiece. From there I worked my way through And Then There Were None, Murder On The Orient Express, Evil Under The Sun and Five Little Pigs.

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I know they’re relatively short and that’s only six, but the journey required detours and diversions. Kate Atkinson’s Shrines Of Gaiety appealed because of its Christie-esque, Flapper Era setting, so I read that. And did you know the famous plot twist in The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd has its antecedent in 1884’s The Shooting Party, the only full-length novel Anton Chekhov ever wrote? I didn’t, but I do know because I took the time to read it as well.

I had hoped to round off the Year of Agatha with a Christmas of Agatha featuring a freshly-minted, all-star adaptation. No such luck. So, after decades of adaptations have we reached peak Christie? Thankfully, the answer is no. This year will see two such items courtesy of the BBC and Netflix.

The Beeb has turned 1944’s Towards Zero into a three-parter and somehow persuaded Hollywood legend Anjelica Huston to join the cast. She plays Lady Tressilian, whose coastal estate in Devon (where else?) forms the backdrop for love triangles, feuds, dashing ex-tennis stars and, naturally, murder. Matthew Rhys and The Wire’s Clarke Peters also star.

Director Sam Yates is calling Towards Zero the “most psychological and sensual” of Christie’s novels (a bold claim) while writer Rachel Bennette hails its characters as being among the author’s “richest and most complex”, particularly the women. “It has been thrilling to bring them all to life in this disturbing tale of truth and lies, love and hate, a story which unfolds amidst the dark, cinematic glamour of the 1930s, yet feels startlingly of our time.”

As it turns out, Towards Zero was the last of the five novels Christie wrote featuring a lesser-known sleuth, Superintendent Battle. Interestingly, Netflix has turned its attention to the second in the same series, 1929’s The Seven Dials Mystery. That novel saw Christie also reprise a character from the first in the series in the form of spunky heroine Lady Eileen Brent, known as Bundle. 

Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall has written this one, another three-parter, and among that starry cast are Helena Bonham-Carter and Martin Freeman. Mia McKenna-Bruce, fresh from her breakout role in Molly Manning Walker’s Cannes award-winner How To Have Sex, plays Bundle.

Finally, Kenneth Branagh isn’t done with Hercule Poirot yet, it seems. Cue groans from those who hated the actor-director’s three previous efforts, Murder On The Orient Express, Death On The Nile and A Haunting In Venice. The word is he’s planning a fourth instalment and – wouldn’t you know? – it’s The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd.

Looks like 2025 will be a Year of Agatha too.

Pipes and doldrums?

Data from the UK’s largest online music retailer Gear 4 Music makes for worrying reading if you’re a traditional music fan and particularly if you’re fond of the skirl of the pipes – the only instruments the company sold fewer of in 2024 were the bassoon and, er, the kazoo. This reflects a year-on-year decline in bagpipe sales, leading to the obvious conclusion that fewer people are learning.

The Herald’s Gabriel McKay sought out Alexandra Duncan, chief executive of music charity the Scottish Schools Pipes and Drums Trust. Addressing this “silent decline” she said: “When bands in our towns and communities vanish quietly, and when there is no tuition in local schools either, we lose a precious cycle of teaching and learning.”

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Celtic Connections, at least, is bastion for traditional music and a haven for pipers from Scotland and beyond. This year’s festival kicks off on January 16 and here The Herald’s Teddy Jamieson runs over some of the best it has to offer.

And finally

Undeterred by the weather, and ignoring the lure of a warm hearth, The Herald’s critics still pass enthusiastically through the doors of the nation’s theatres and concert venues.

Music critic Keith Bruce was in his seat at the Perth Concert Hall for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Viennese Gala, featuring (what else?) a programme packed with works by Johan Strauss senior and junior. But there was also space for something a little different – Harry Lauder’s Keep Right On To The End Of The Road, performed by tenor Jamie MacDougall.

Meanwhile Neil Cooper has swapped theatre for film and the proscenium arch for the art gallery to take in Pass The Spoon, a collaboration between artist/greeting card mogul David Shrigley, composer David Fennessy, and Nicholas Bone, director of theatre company Magnetic North.

First mounted as a show at the Tramway in 2011, this version was filmed in 2012 and was being screened at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket. Imagine an absurdist mash-up of Masterchef and It’s A Knockout scripted by envelope pushing 19th century writer Alfred Jarry, is Neil’s erudite summation.

Turning to books – and sticking with fruit in a way – Neil Mackay has run the rule over Dead-End Memories, the latest novel by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto.