Agatha Christie done in

SIR – Channel 5’s fictionalised drama in which Agatha Christie encounters murder, mayhem but also romance with her future husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, on a dig in Iraq, was, Michael Hogan says, a “jolly enough premise” (Television, December 16).

He adds that the drama “played fast and loose with history. The script’s swearing and more racy scenes – notably the Carry On-style antics of a sexually voracious ex-pat couple and Christie initiating congress in the catacombs – felt gratuitously crowbarred in to spice things up for contemporary audiences.”

Yet contemporary audiences seem happy to watch adaptations of her works that are not spiced up. Agatha Christie was not called the Queen of Crime for nothing. As with other British literary geniuses, the mystery is why so many people in the world of dramatic art seemed bored by her brilliance. They see her enduring popularity not as an indication that they are dealing with a classic that deserves careful handling, but as a sign of the stupidity of mainstream public opinion.

In love with their own supposedly superior imagination, which only seems to be ignited by graphic sex, they would not know an original idea if it crept up behind them in the library with a lead pipe.

Ann Farmer

Woodford Green, Essex

SIR – When was a law passed to oblige every television drama, regardless of period, setting, or subject, to use crude and offensive language?

Even a rather shallow fiction about Agatha Christie had to be scarred with the use of the F-word.

It is unnecessary and vulgar. It impresses no one. It is just an ugly assault upon the viewer.

E C Coleman

Bishop Norton, Lincolnshire