The Detection Club has started filming, and the and BritBox have already put Miles Jupp, Bryony Hannah and Cara Theobold at the centre of the 10-part mystery drama. The project moves from announcement to production with a defined cast, a defined setting and a built-in premise: three crime writers pulled into murders they would usually only invent.
Miles Jupp said he is delighted to be joining The Detection Club, calling G.K. Chesterton “one of the great intellects and storytellers of his age” and “an endlessly intriguing character - as well as a pleasingly eccentric one.” That kind of casting note does more than fill roles on a press sheet; it tells viewers the series is leaning on recognizable literary personalities rather than generic period figures.
Kit Lambert and Simon Brett
Kit Lambert created the series for television from an original idea by Simon Brett, which gives The Detection Club a clear route from concept to screen rather than a loose historical riff. Lambert says the drama asks what would happen if the creators of famous fictional detectives solved murders themselves, and that frame is doing the heavy lifting: the characters are amateur sleuths, but the plot moves them into real murder cases instead of allowing them to stay safely in the world of puzzles.
The series is set in 1930s London and is being produced by Studios Drama Productions, with filming taking place across the West Midlands. That combination of period, place and production scale matters because it gives the show a fixed visual and narrative lane; this is not a sprawling contemporary crime title but a 10-part mystery with enough room for the writers to turn from literary banter to actual investigation.
Agatha Christie and Dorothy L
Bryony Hannah plays Agatha Christie and Cara Theobold plays Dorothy L. Sayers, while Viraj Juneja plays D.I. Greenway, the out-of-his-depth young police detective. Lambert’s setup puts three celebrated writers together with a police figure who is not in control of events, so the story has built-in friction from the start: the writers bring imagination, but the detective has to manage the consequences when their first real murder case lands in front of them.
Deborah Sathe said the casting room felt like “the avengers had assembled” when Miles Jupp, Bryony Hannah and Cara Theobold brought the script to life, and she said the team cannot wait to broadcast the show to the audience. The next step is the broadcast itself, and the unresolved part is narrower now: which specific murder cases the three writers will be drawn into has not been set out, so the show’s appeal rests on the cast, the premise and the way the cases unfold on screen.
