100 Years Later, Agatha Christie’s Greatest Twist Could Finally Happen Onscreen

After joining Screen Rant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers.

Agatha Christie fans have been spoiled in recent years, with more adaptations of the great author’s work appearing in film and television than ever before. Yet, Christie’s greatest mystery of all still eludes motion picture studios. Widely considered unfilmable, this work has been adapted for the screen twice before, but on both occasions its most important element was left out.

The work in question is a Hercule Poirot novel that’s done more to shape the crime genre than any other book before or since its release in 1926. It ends with a dazzling final twist that makes Netflix’s new ending to Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials seem wholly unoriginal by comparison. Sadly, this twist has never made it to the screen.

At long last, though, that could well be about to change. The announcement of an upcoming six-part Poirot series produced by the BBC has got both fans and critics talking. It just might be the moment that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, widely considered the best book Agatha Christie ever wrote, gets the onscreen ending it deserves.

The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd Ends With Agatha Christie’s Best Twist

Mystery lovers who aren’t aware of this groundbreaking novel’s famous final twist should skip this part of the article. But anyone who’s read – or even heard of – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd will almost certainly know the twist we’re discussing.

The novel is narrated by one of its main characters, Dr. James Sheppard, who spends most of the plot assisting Hercule Poirot with his investigation into the murder of its titular wealthy businessman. During the book’s final pages, Poirot reveals the killer, but it’s the last person readers could possibly have expected.

Famously, the Belgian detective turns to Sheppard himself, and identifies the novel’s narrator as its murderer. This spectacular revelation, and Sheppard’s response, comprise one of the most celebrated passages of writing in the history of crime fiction. The passage works so well because it’s been set up so beautifully by Christie, throughout a book that constitutes the perfect thriller.

This Twist Has Never Featured In Any Poirot Adaptation

In large part because of the difficulty in translating unreliable narration to the screen, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has been subject to far fewer adaptations than other best-selling Poirot stories by Agatha Christie, such as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Nevertheless, it’s still been adapted twice, including within the best-known TV series based on Christie’s works.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd received its first screen adaptation in 1931, when the lost film Alibi was released. Starring Austin Trevor as Hercule Poirot, the movie is actually an indirect adaptation of Christie’s book, as it’s based on a different stage play from 1928, which was also called Alibi.

The play completely changed the perspective of the story, removing its legendary twist in the process. Yet, Alibi isn’t the only screen adaptation to have removed this crucial element from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In the year 2000, the acclaimed ITV TV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot also excluded the twist from its adaptation of the novel.

In the ITV version, we’re made aware that Dr. Sheppard is the murderer when his sister reads his diary. Neither Poirot nor Sheppard himself are present for this anticlimactic revelation. In fact, Sheppard isn’t even the narrator of the episode, and he isn’t much of an assistant to Poirot, either.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot is a masterful adaptation of the author’s work in general, with very few disappointing installments. But its take on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of them, lending even more weight to the novel’s reputation for being “unfilmable”. It remains one of the only Christie mysteries that still needs an adaptation worthy of her name.

The BBC’s Upcoming Poirot Reboot Could Include Roger Ackroyd

The news that the BBC is developing a Hercule Poirot series for 2027 of its own has generated an enormous amount of excitement among mystery enthusiasts. Speculation is rife that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is among the works being adapted for this six-part TV show, finally consigning one of the small screen’s greatest missed opportunities to history.

Next year, we could see Christie’s Dr. Sheppard reveal in all its glory, a century after it first appeared on the page. It must be said that the casting of up-and-coming actor Edward Bluemel as Hercule Poirot makes this possibility less likely, as he’s at least two decades younger than the detective in his pomp.

Poirot is retired and into his fifties during The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whereas Bluemel is only 33. Still, this age difference doesn’t affect the main plot of the mystery, which is ripe for remaking for television amid the resurgence of screen murder mysteries this decade.