After several years of Netflix making movies that feel an awful lot like Agatha Christie mysteries (Knives Out, its sequel Glass Onion, and the forthcoming Wake Up Dead Man), the streamer has finally decided to just go straight to the source. Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, a three-part adaptation of novel The Seven Dials Mystery, is slated to premiere in January and will be the service’s first foray into the sort of prestige whodunnit series that BBC, ITV, and BritBox have made a staple of their regular lineups in recent years.Seven Dials is one of Christie’s lesser-known works, and one that doesn’t feature her more recognizable (and popular) sleuths like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. Instead, it’s one of her Superintendent Battle books, and if you don’t recognize that name, it’s because most adaptations of those works tend to edit him out of the story in favor of a younger or more standalone sort of hero. (Womp womp.) Here, Battle not only gets to stick around, he’ll be played by Sherlock fan favorite Martin Freeman, and will form an unlikely investigative duo with the younger Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, a fizzy Bright Young Thing with an inquisitive spirit who’ll be played by How to Have Sex’s Mia McKenna-Bruce. cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});The series hails from former Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall in his first TV project since leaving the TARDIS behind. But lest we forget, Chibnall is also the creator of Broadchurch, a series that—in its first season at least—is indisputably one of the best crime dramas of all time. So I think we can all agree he has more than proven his chops when it comes to telling densely plotted and wildly twisty mysteries, and seems a natural fit if Netflix is indeed trying to make a new Christieverse take off. The story is set in 1920s England, at a lavish house party where a practical joke involving eight alarm clocks—one of which mysteriously disappears—goes horribly wrong. As so often happens in these things, someone turns up dead, and Lady Eileen is determined to suss out whodunnit, but the answers she discovers may well change her life forever. (Battle, it seems will be more of a supporting figure in her search for the truth, and I can’t say that any of us are going to be particularly sad about that.)As befits a proper British mystery of this type, the series’ cast is impressively starry, featuring The Crown’s Helena Bonham Carter as Eileen’s mother, Lady Caterham; Queen Charlotte’s Corey Mylchreest as Gerry Wade; My Lady Jane’s Edward Bluemel as Jimmy Thesinger, and KAOS’s Nabhaan Rizwan as Ronnie Devereux. Could Seven Dials be the start of a new Christie cinematic universe at Netflix? Given that Seven Dials is one of several Superintendent Battle stories—the character was introduced in The Secret of Chimneys, and also appears in both Murder Is Easy and Towards Zero, two stories that the BBC and BritBox recently adapted without him—there’s certainly every chance that’s the case. Keep your fingers crossed, mystery lovers.Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials will premiere January 15 on Netflix. The post Broadchurch Creator Will Bring Agatha Christie Mystery to Netflix appeared first on Den of Geek.