New BBC Poirot series to feature youngest detective ever

British actor Edward Bluemel will take the titular role in the new BBC series, the youngest actor to play Poirot ever.

Mr Bluemel is known for his work in Amazon’s My Lady Jane, as well as Killing Eve and a Discovery of Witches.

The six-part series Hercule is described as “an intimate study of Hercule the man and an epic portrait of Britain between the wars”.

Mr Bluemel said: “I feel very lucky to have been trusted with such an iconic character who has been played by so many great actors. I can’t wait to continue Hercule’s legacy.”

Creators of the series have said it will “take a magnifying glass to three of Christie’s most celebrated stories”.

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David Suchet, who played Agatha Christie’s beloved detective Hercule Poirot in the ITV series Poirot. (Image: Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire)

The ITV series Poirot, starring David Suchet in the title role, was a staple of British television for more than two decades, running from 1989 to 2013.

More recently Kenneth Branagh starred as Poirot in film adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and A Haunting in Venice.

Filming will begin this summer, primarily in Liverpool.

Born in Torquay in 1890, Dame Agatha wrote 80 crime novels and more than 25 plays, including The Mousetrap.

She has sold some two billion books, including more than one billion in the English language alone, according to the author’s website.

She lived and wrote in Oxfordshire for 40 years until her death in 1976, residing in Wallingford.