Agatha Christie’s Great-Grandson Says ‘The Traitors UK’ Copied Her

I haven’t had much opportunity to discuss the British version of The Traitors but believe me when I say I’m just as devoted to it as the American version. Actually, since you asked, my favorite is the Australian version because they just really dial up the camp-o-meter in a way I appreciate. Honorable mention to New Zealand, which is tied with Britain for taking the whole thing a little too seriously but in a fun way…and that’s all of the English-speaking iterations of the show available on Peacock, so that’s all I know. I may start a petition to make every foreign version available so I never have to watch anything else.

Anywho, the British version is fun because the whole concept is very British already—the rolling green hills of the Scottish countryside, the maximalist castle (UK and US shoot in the same castle). And, you know, Brits famously love mysteries. At least, that’s the main reason I have an Anglophilic fantasy about moving to the Cotswolds and falling in love with an innkeeper.

All that aesthetic is why the great-grandson of Agatha Christie, the woman we have to thank for mysteries as we know them, told Radio Times, “I think The Traitors is brilliant. It’s absolutely based on an Agatha Christie murder-mystery concept.”

I mean … yeah … duh?

James Prichard, to be clear, isn’t mad about the homage. He just thinks, you know, credit where it’s due.

“There’s a recognition amongst a lot of the crime-writing fraternity that my great-grandmother is an inspiration,” he said. (Ahem … how can I join the fraternity without having to actually write about crime? Tysm.) More specifically, he thinks her novel And Then There Were None served as the inspiration for the style of the UK show. “At the beginning of the series, they’re on the train,” he explains, speaking of the opening sequence of each season, in which the contestants are collected from various points around the UK and take a train to the castle, which mirrors the opening of the novel in question. “They’ve got the board with all the faces being picked off, one by one. They’ve got the library, it’s everything Agatha Christie.”

Listen, he’s not wrong. And Then There Were None is a story of a group of strangers being invited to a remote island by a mysterious host and being murdered one by one until there’s no one left. Apt comparison! But as far as the style goes, Christie was the most prolific writer of her time—one of the most prolific of all time— and thus kind of has the credit of establishing the aesthetic of that period and of mysteries and who-dun-it’s in general, so everything in the genre is going to be inspired by her work in some capacity. Even bothering to make the comparison, as if it isn’t obvious, is pretty pointless.

And by the way, the original version of the show was Dutch, De Verraders, from 2021. It was “inspired by a real-life mutiny aboard the 17th-century ship Batavia, which was wrecked off Australia’s coast in 1629,” and producers originally wanted it to be filmed on a ship but had to settle for a castle for logistical reasons, I assume.

Also, are we forgetting about the summer camp game “Mafia”?! As a former camp counselor, I will never forget.