Clockwise from top left: “And Then There Were None,” “Poirot,” “The Witness for the Prosecution” and “Murder on the Orient Express.”

Clockwise from top left: “And Then There Were None,” “Poirot,” “The Witness for the Prosecution” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” Mammoth Screen; Acorn TV; Paramount Pictures

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More than 40 years after her death, Agatha Christie is having a moment. Kenneth Branagh’s lush new adaptation of her novel “Murder on the Orient Express” comes to theaters on Friday. December will bring the release of “Crooked House,” a film based on Christie’s mystery of the same name, starring Glenn Close, Gillian Anderson and Christina Hendricks. And for the past few years, the BBC has been cranking out fantastic mini-series based on the author’s works, with seven more in development.

There are so many Christie adaptations — and, in some cases, so many versions of the same story — that you may be confused about where to start. To help, we’ve compiled a guide to the essential Agatha Christie on film and TV.

Big-Screen Christie

From left, Louis Hayward, Roland Young, Walter Huston, June Duprez and Barry Fitzgerald in “And Then There Were None.” 20th Century Fox

‘And Then There Were None’ (1945)

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Eight strangers arrive at a mansion on an island, at the behest of a mysterious “U.N. Owen.” Their host is nowhere to be found, but a butler (Richard Haydn) and his wife, the cook (Queenie Leonard), preside over a tense dinner where the guests learn what they have in common: They all played roles in separate murders. One by one, characters start dropping dead. No Christie novel has appeared on screen more frequently than “And Then There Were None,” but this first adaptation is still the gold standard. The French director René Clair (“À Nous la Liberté”) finds the humor at the heart of this cozy mystery, and every single performance is outstanding.

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Marlene Dietrich in “Witness for the Prosecution.” MGM

‘Witness for the Prosecution’ (1957)

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The great Billy Wilder directed and helped write this big-screen version of a play by Christie, which rivals René Clair’s “And Then There Were None” as the best film adaptation of Christie’s work. Charles Laughton stars as an ailing lawyer who agrees to represent Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), a man charged with murdering the love-struck widow who has made him the heir to her substantial fortune (Norma Varden). Marlene Dietrich gives one of her most compelling performances, in her role as Vole’s icy, conniving wife.

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Margaret Rutherford in “Murder, She Said.” MGM

‘Murder, She Said’ (1962)

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Based on the novel “4:50 From Paddington,” “Murder, She Said” is the first and most acclaimed of four well-received movies that cast the affable Margaret Rutherford as Christie’s elderly detective, Miss Marple. After witnessing a murder on a passing train, Marple goes undercover as a maid at the estate where she believes the body was dumped and starts digging. Although Christie despised Rutherford’s lighthearted portrayal of her famous spinster, audiences loved it. Decades later, hers remains the most iconic Marple on film.

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A scene from “Murder on the Orient Express.” Paramount Pictures

‘Murder on the Orient Express’ (1974)

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Branagh isn’t the first big-name director to tackle “Murder on the Orient Express” — or to pack the cast with A-list actors. Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Vanessa Redgrave and Anthony Perkins are just a few of the top-shelf stars Sidney Lumet recruited for this fun and stylish whodunit. When a hated American millionaire (Richard Widmark) is found stabbed to death on the Orient Express, Christie’s mustachioed sleuth, Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney), must work his way to the bottom of a case in which virtually everyone on the train is a suspect.

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Angela Lansbury in “The Mirror Crack’d.” EMI Films

‘The Mirror Crack’d’ (1980)

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Actress Angela Lansbury’s most beloved character, the writer-detective Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV show “Murder, She Wrote,” was essentially a Miss Marple based in Maine. But Lansbury also got a chance to play the genuine article, in the 1980 adaptation of Christie’s Marple novel “The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side.” This fun nostalgia trip, directed by the celebrated James Bond director Guy Hamilton, concerns a poisoning on the small-town set of a 1950s Hollywood film. Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak are a hoot as aging rival movie stars, and the supporting cast includes Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson.

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Peter Ustinov in “Evil Under the Sun.” Universal Pictures, via Everett Collection

‘Evil Under the Sun’ (1982)

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Hamilton also directed this Poirot mystery set in the world of show business, which pairs well with “The Mirror Crack’d” as a double feature. Peter Ustinov dons the waxed mustache to investigate the murder of a monstrous Broadway diva (Diana Rigg) at a posh resort in the Mediterranean, and the all-star cast features Maggie Smith, James Mason, Sylvia Miles and Jane Birkin. “Evil Under the Sun” was Roger Ebert’s favorite Christie adaptation of the 1970s and ‘80s; he called Ustinov’s Poirot “a wonderful mixture of the mentally polished and physically maladroit.”

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Small-Screen Christie

Joan Hickson in “Miss Marple.” BBC

‘Miss Marple’ (1984-1992, Britain)

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It may be harder to find than ITV’s more recent series “Agatha Christie’s Marple,” which is streaming on Hulu and Acorn, but this BBC show is a classic for a reason. Christie, who died in 1976, didn’t get to see Joan Hickson’s faithful and widely beloved interpretation of her character. The author did, however, bless the casting choice in a prescient note to Hickson from 1946. “I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple,” Christie wrote. And you can see why. No actress captures what The Guardian calls Marple’s “fluffy ruthlessness” better.

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David Suchet in “Agatha Christie’s Poirot.” Acorn TV

‘Agatha Christie’s Poirot’ (1989-2013, Britain)

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If Hickson is the definitive Marple, then David Suchet is the definitive Poirot. In nearly a quarter-century of playing the Belgian detective on an ITV series that adapted the vast majority of Christie’s Poirot novels and short stories, Suchet humanized a character Christie once described as an “egocentric little creep.” Most of the show’s episodes run 90 minutes, so getting through all 70 would be an enormous undertaking. “The Lost Mine” from Season 2, which won an Edgar Award, is as good a starting point as any.

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A scene from “And Then There Were None.” Mammoth Screen

‘And Then There Were None’ (2015, Britain)

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The Agatha Christie canon returned to the BBC when the broadcaster signed a deal in 2014 for the right to adapt several of the author’s works. An early result of that partnership was this two-part mini-series, a dark take on “And Then There Were None” from the screenwriter Sarah Phelps (“The Casual Vacancy”). Critics praised bold performances by such first-rate British thespians as Charles Dance, Miranda Richardson and the “Poldark” heartthrob, Aidan Turner.

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Kim Cattrall and Billy Howle in “The Witness for the Prosecution.” Acorn TV

‘The Witness for the Prosecution’ (2016, Britain)

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Last year, Phelps returned to the BBC with another bleak, psychologically rich reimagining of a famous Christie tale. Toby Jones is superb as the sickly lawyer, but the performance to watch comes from Kim Cattrall. Cast as the lusty, murdered widow, she resists any temptation to relive her days as the louche “Sex and the City” cougar, Samantha Jones, a decision that gives her character’s gruesome demise the emotional weight it deserves.

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