She might be dead, but Agatha Christie is giving writing lessons. Sort of...
Creepy but vital question: if your writing tutor was the bestselling novelist of all time, and able to reveal the secrets behind writing irresistible crime mysteries while sitting at a mahogany desk wearing her trademark tweed suit and pearls, would it matter that she's dead – and that you are, in fact, looking at an eerily realistic, AI-supported video version of her?
Such questions hover around the new BBC Maestro series, Agatha Christie on Writing, a 2.5-hour online course of 11 lessons led by the author herself, even though she died back in 1976 at the age of 85. Yet here she is, staring into the camera, grey hair neatly curled, a brooch on her lapel, taking us on a time-travel journey to the 1940s to share her tips of the trade.
'I am Agatha Christie,' she announces in the course's trailer, sitting with her hands clasped after a camera has panned across a fountain pen, a magnifying glass and a cup of tea in a floral teacup on her desk. 'And this is my BBC Maestro course on writing.' It's gobsmackingly real. But Christie, who's also shown getting out of a car, sitting on a garden bench writing and wandering through
a large house, isn't entirely AI-created. Conceived with the help of Christie's great-grandson, James Prichard, the online lessons feature a real actor, Vivien Keene, who wears a wig and costumes and uses a script drawn from Christie's letters, interviews and personal writing. Nearly 100 people, including academics, researchers, hair and make-up artists, a set designer and visual-effects experts, are behind the course and the digital magic that allows Keene's moving face to be overlaid with Christie's features.
Resurrecting famous dead people via AI isn't new. Virtually Parkinson, an AI-created podcast 'hosted' by the late Michael Parkinson, features a digitally recreated version of the chat-show host's voice (derived from recordings) interviewing living celebrities. The show's technical prowess means AI Parkinson is able to analyse guests' answers and pose follow-up questions. Take AI Parky asking UK gardening expert Monty Don about what draws him back to the garden: 'It always comes back to the same thing of getting down to the ground, back to the earth,' Don says.
AI Parky: 'I find that interesting. What is it about this connection to the earth that nurtures you so profoundly?' Don, laughing: 'I think it's to do with ... the rhythms of nature ... the way things grow.'
It feels like the tip of the iceberg. In 2024, US software company ElevenLabs partnered with the estates of Laurence Olivier, Judy Garland and James Dean to use the late actors' voices as narrators for books and other text material on its Reader app. How long, then, before Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë, quills in hand, are explaining Elizabeth Bennet or Jane Eyre? If the Queen of Mystery's 'realness' is any guide, the answer is, imminently.
'I will pass on the best advice I can from my own experiences,' Christie says, her crystalline gaze eyeing her students. 'But I should warn you, you must be serious about it if you wish to be a success.' Lenny Ann Low
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