‘Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials’ Boss Explains Changes in Adaptation — Will There Be More?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials.]

If you’ve read Agatha Christie‘s The Seven Dials Mystery, there are still some surprises in the Netflix adaptation, streaming on January 15.

The three-part Seven Dials follows Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce), who becomes entangled in a murder mystery after a party at her house. As it all unfolds, she becomes privy to a secret society (Seven Dials) and the attempted theft of a non-corrosive, non-magnetic metal that can withstand high temperatures. It turns out that her friend Jimmy (Ed Bluemel) and the original victim’s sister Lorraine are behind the theft, but they’re acting on behalf of Bundle’s mother, Lady Caterham (Helena Bonham Carter).

Along the way, Bundle finds she’s caught the attention of the superintendent assigned to the case, Battle (Martin Freeman), who, in the final scene, reveals himself to be part of the Seven Dials — and he offers her the spot left open by her father’s death. She accepts.

Below, executive producer and writer Chris Chibnall explains the major changes from the pages to the screen and shares if there could be more with at least Bundle and Battle.

What excited you about adapting this story the way that you did?

Chris Chibnall: I think what Seven Dials has, what the Seven Dials Mystery‘s novel has is lots of things that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with maybe the more stereotypical or preconceived notion of Agatha Christie. So first of all, at its center, it’s got this incredible character of Bundle, Lady Eileen Brent. She’s 19. She’s a young aristocrat, but she’s so much more than that. You feel like she’s embodying the spirit of a young Agatha Christie, who, as I’m sure you know, was the first British woman to surf standing up in Honolulu. And so it has Bundle.

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It’s not a sort of theatrical, old-school drawing room, one-location narrative. It’s an espionage thriller. It’s a whodunit that evolves into an espionage thriller. And one of the biggest things, along with Bundle, on rereading it, because I’d read Christie when I was young, I was like, this is really funny. These characters are really interesting and funny, and it’s got a bit of P.G. Wodehouse. It’s got a bit of Bright Young Things. It’s got real energy in different generations of characters. So there was just so much in there. And I thought it felt like a cinematic thriller when I read it, and it feels propulsive, and it’s moving. It’s not just people in a kitchen or a drawing room; it’s people going out into the landscape, going into secret societies, going into the streets of London, onto steam trains, is kind of how we did it in the end. So there was that, really.

And the chance to maybe redefine the language of how Christie is done on screen for the streaming era and go, what does Christie look like on Netflix? Because there are so many great adaptations that have been done over the decades. But for us to go, can we introduce a whole new generation of people via Bundle to Agatha Christie? For me, as a lifelong fan, if you can repay that joy or pay it forward to other people, then those were the things I wanted to do.

There are some key differences, however, from the original story, like Jimmy and Lorraine were involved in the theft in both, but in the show, so is Bundle’s mom. That’s a new element. She’s not even in the book because it’s her father who’s in there. Talk about making that switch and having her mom be the perpetrator to get that great scene between them on the train.

I mean, it comes to what are you writing about and what is the story about? The story I always felt is about different generations in the shadow, in the sort of post-war, post Spanish flu, global pandemic shadow, and the people in their 20s in the 1920s being the people who embody the roaring ‘20s, and they’re going to grow up. But the previous generation, so the parents’ generation, has lived through unimaginable loss and a lack of control, and the world has gone mad. So I think Lady Caterham in this show is defined by her loss and her grief, and what I wanted to do was keep the kernel of the novel. So the story still plays out, as you know, as per the novel, Jimmy and Lorraine do it in the novel, and et cetera, but I just wanted another layer as well.

And really, this is so Bundle’s story. It just made sense. And what I hope is we’ve designed it so you can rewatch it. And I think if you rewatch it knowing the ending, you’ll see the first word that Lady Caterham says is the first word of the show is ghastly. She cannot bear the modern society that she’s coming into. And really, the story is of the two different generations of Lady Caterham and Bundle and how they view the world and the clashing values of that that literally come to a head and are embodied in that scene that you are talking about in the train carriage, the two-hander between Mia and Helena. And one of the reasons for changing it is to get somebody incredible like Helena, and you put those two together in the tiniest space. And it really was on a steam train track in the southwest of England on one of the hottest days of 2024. Anybody who’s there that day will tell you they were like [sweating]. That’s not a studio built; they were in this tiny space with the director and the cameraman. But it’s also to explore the themes of the time and really wanted to write about the society that was happening then. And I think echoes down the century now.

Bundle accepts the invitation to join the Seven Dials pretty quickly. What factors into that? Because you also added in the fact that her father was part of it, and we see his death at the beginning of the series. How much was that a selling point for her to be like, “You know what? Yes, I want to follow in his footsteps in a way and do this work”?

It’s really true. And there’s a line in Episode 1 where Lady Caterham says, “She’s too much like you,” to the photograph of Iain Glen, Lord Caterham, and that, “It doesn’t do to ask too many questions,” and “You sound just like your father,” she says to Bundle as they’re walking to the memorial in Episode 1. So it’s very much that Bundle is outward-looking, Lady Caterham is inward-looking, wants to stay at home, wants to build a moat between her and the world. And so yeah, Bundle is her father’s daughter. And I think she’s been auditioning unwittingly all the way. And in a way, she gets the adventure she didn’t want, but that she was always destined for.

The show doesn’t include Bundle and Bill’s (Hughie O’Donnell) romantic relationship that’s in the original story. Was that because of the story you wanted to tell with Bundle, that there’s no reason for her to have a romance? There is also that tease of her and Gerry’s (Corey Mylchreest) potential that’s not in the original story either.

I felt that the change we had to make was once she gets the denouement of the story — in the book, Bundle gets knocked out or she has sleeping potion, she’s asleep in the car for the denouement. I was like, we cannot have that. She has to drive the denouement. And it was the same with coming together with Bill at the end. I suppose because it’s a sort of lighter comedy in the novel, it’s very much, well, those always end with marriages or proposals or those kind of things. And I thought, I really wanted the final images of this to be about Bundle herself and Bundle as an individual and Bundle as a woman going forward into the rest of the decade.

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Battle is in several other stories, and Bundle is in one, but that one takes place before Seven Dials. Could we see another screen adaptation with at least Mia and Martin? It would be fun to follow Bundle as part of Seven Dials.

Wouldn’t it? I mean, listen, if everybody’s watching it and everybody, who knows? But I mean, I think we’ve felt so lucky to have them for this. I love to hear you say that. I think we all felt, oh, these two are just delightful together, but anything else would be in the hands of many, many other people.

It was fun to watch the Bundle and Battle scenes as almost interviews because she was being recruited without even knowing it. So, because you were building to that ending, knowing where you were taking it, what did you want to do with those interactions leading up to that last scene?

Yeah, it’s a test. The whole thing, when you rewatch, just as I’m saying about Bundle and Lady Caterham, Bundle and Battle, from the moment he hears about Gerry Wade’s death and he knows that it’s connected to Chimneys, he knows that it’s connected to Lord Caterham who he once knew — I think I would say also probably offscreen, it’s not at all in the piece, but I would feel like he’s been monitoring Bundle from a distance before the show starts, and just keeping an eye, I feel like he probably has an honor to pay to Lord Caterham. But yeah, every scene is a test for her, sometimes set by Battle. Can she follow me in a car? Is she any good at that? I’m going to take her down right through London. What’s she doing climbing out the window? Can she climb back up to the window?

Everything, and even that first interview, is a duel between them, a verbal sparring. And what’s so lovely is seeing Mia and Martin really inhabit that, and that it’s a battle of wits all the way. And then she finally realizes at the end, “Oh, you’ve been doing this all along.” And it’s like, yeah, she’s essentially been sitting for her driving test through the whole thing, a Seven Dials driving test.

Are there any other changes that you considered making but didn’t?

No, I don’t think so. I wanted to keep to as close to the novel as possible, but just add in layers rather than change everything wholesale. And the biggest one really is the sort of two things at the end in terms of changing Lord Caterham to Lady Caterham and adding another participant to the conspiracy and then what happens within Seven Dials and the recruitment of Bundle. But no, I mean, inevitably in adapting something, you have to lose things you love. And there’s a great character who’s an aunt of Bundle’s, who is in the book. There’s a great chapter with her, and I would’ve loved that. But no, I think we was very close to what we wanted to do. And then Chris Sweeney, the director, just executed it all so brilliantly with this incredible cast.

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, Streaming Now, Netflix