AI Agatha Christie to Teach Writing Class

The BBC Maestro online learning platform will enable audiences to take writing classes from an AI Agatha Christie.

The initiative sees BBC Studios and BBC Maestro working with the Agatha Christie Estate to bring the author to life with AI, a professional actress (Vivien Keene) and visual effects artists, tapping into restored archival interviews, private letters and writings.

Using AI-enhanced technology, licensed images and audio recordings, the course is complemented by a script created by academics from Christie’s own words and teachings. The course was curated by Dr. Mark Aldridge, Michelle Kazmer, Gray Robert Brown and Jamie Bernthal-Hooker.

James Prichard, Agatha Christie’s great-grandson, chairman and CEO 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. Through this course, you truly will receive a lesson in crafting a masterful mystery, in Agatha’s very own words.”

BBC Maestro CEO Michael Levine added: “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. Agatha Christie’s BBC Maestro course on Writing invites anyone and everyone who adores Agatha Christie’s writing to learn through her own words, exactly how she does it; her background, her inspirations, her craft and the lessons she learnt along the way. BBC Maestro was established to offer the next generation of talent a way to get started, to learn, not from teachers, but from those who have done it themselves. To be inspired by learning from the greatest. As an 11-year-old boy reading Why Didn’t they Ask Evans? I could never have imagined that one day, I’d be watching Agatha Christie teaching me how she did it.”