Agatha Christie to be resurrected by AI to teach writing course nearly 50 years after her death

Agatha Christie is to be “resurrected” nearly 50 years after her death to teach a writing course for the BBC.

The bestselling mystery writer behind Belgian detective Hercule Poirot began her career in 1916; her works have sold more than two billion copies, including 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections.

She died in 1976, aged 85, leaving behind an imitable legacy for the crime fiction genre.

Aspiring writers will now be able to learn from the legend herself, through the online learning platform, BBC Maestro, using innovative artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

The Murder on the Orient Express author will be brought to life with the help of actor Vivien Keen. Christie’s likeness will be reconstructed using AI-generated images and her voice will be restored through audio recordings.

Experts pored through the writer’s works and archival interviews to distill her teachings and philosophy on writing, story structure, cast creation, plot twists, red herrings and the art of suspense. The result is that every word spoken by Keene will be Christie’s own.

The course itself is delivered across 11 videos, each less than 20 minutes long, and costs £79 to purchase. Alternatively, Maestro subscribers can enjoy the class as part of their annual fee, which costs £120, and allows the user access to other courses on a variety of subjects, including writing by other bestsellers such as JoJo Moyes.

The writer’s great-grandson James Prichard, the chairman and chief executive 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.”

“As a lifelong fan of Agatha Christie, bringing this course to life has been a dream come true, and I am immensely proud of it,” said Michael Levine, chief executive of BBC Maestro, which runs online courses and developed Agatha Christie Writing with BBC Studios, the writer’s estate and a team of experts.

Levine said that the course promises to enable students to “learn through her own words, exactly how she does it; her background, her inspirations, her craft and the lessons she learned along the way”.