Agatha Christie Screen Spotlight: French Series ‘Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games’ Puts Twist on The Classic Mysteries
Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, zippy French TV series Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games inserts new characters as the protagonists in classic Christie stories.
Although Hercule Poirot is Belgian, he’s always been played onscreen by British and/or American actors, and he rarely speaks more than a word or two of French. It would make sense, then, for a French adaptation of Agatha Christie’s work to reclaim Poirot’s Francophone heritage, but the French TV series Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games instead invents new characters to insert as the protagonists in Christie’s stories.
Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Criminal Games is the second of three series on TV network France 2 that interpret Christie’s work under the overall banner of The Little Murders of Agatha Christie. With 27 episodes that aired from 2013-2020, it’s the longest of the three installments, bringing a zippy, midcentury modern style to some classic Christie stories.
Suave police Commissaire Swan Laurence (Samuel Labarthe) takes the lead on cases that were originally solved by Poirot, Miss Marple, and other Christie characters, aided by his ditzy but intuitive secretary Marlène Leroy (Élodie Frenck) and proto-feminist newspaper reporter Alice Avril (Blandine Bellavoir). Laurence is sharp and focused, but he’s also arrogant, condescending and more than a little sexist, in a way that reflects the time period but can also be a bit off-putting, especially given the largely genial onscreen portrayals of iconic Christie detectives.
Still, Criminal Games maintains a light tone thanks to its infusions of humor, even into the most somber Christie stories. The main characters often end up as central figures in each case, in a way that would certainly require Laurence to recuse himself in real life. It raises the stakes when those characters are seemingly in peril, and it also gives them a more personal connection to the story, which is helpful to build emotional engagement in an ongoing series. Laurence may often be a jerk, but Criminal Games pays more attention to his personal life than Christie ever gave to Poirot’s.
Those are mostly secondary elements in the adaptations of Christie’s expertly constructed mysteries, which form the backbone of each episode even if some details have been changed. The settings have been moved from villages and country houses to more urban settings in the French city of Lille, and the sometimes languid pacing of Christie’s stories has been increased, although each episode still runs about 90 minutes.
Laurence, who complains bitterly about having to travel even briefly to the countryside, would probably have no patience for Miss Marple and would consider Poirot to be an annoying dilettante, much in the way he constantly dismisses the insights of his female associates. Marlène is a bit scatterbrained, but Alice clearly has a keen mind and often figures things out before Laurence does — not that he would ever acknowledge her deductive skills.
Despite his hubris, Laurence is still an effective investigator, and like other Christie detectives, he’s fond of gathering together all the suspects from a particular crime and explaining to them how he arrived at the solution. He also works with the full authority of the police, so he doesn’t have to rely on allies to carry out arrests and official interrogations — although in one episode he does tell Marlène to get Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard on the phone, to consult about a drug-trafficking case.
That Poirot-related Easter egg is a rarity in a show that’s mostly interested in claiming its own, particularly French identity. The characters’ sometimes brazen horniness would never show up in the prim and proper England of Christie’s novels, but it also carries a uniquely French sort of sleazy charm that is different from the modern edgy Christie adaptations made in the U.K. It may not be the snooty Belgian tone that Poirot is known for, but it still lends a refreshing Francophone flair to Criminal Games’ retellings of familiar Christie mysteries.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for Vulture, IndieWire, CBR, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.