How are Josh Dylan and Antonia Thomas bringing Agatha Christie’s 'Tommy & Tuppence' to life?

In this new BritBox take on Agatha Christie’s crime- solving couple, the spark comes from the messiness: exes who haven’t quite moved on, falling back into each other’s orbit while stumbling through danger. Antonia Thomas plays Tuppence Cowley, back in London after a stint in L.A. chasing acting gigs; Josh Dylan is Tommy Beresford, a crime novelist who looks successful from the outside but is stuck with writer’s block. They reconnect after nearly a decade apart and wind up chasing leads—and old feelings—at the same time.

“Well, I suppose you get to know a person very, very well by trying to solve a crime. There’s nothing more important than life and death,”

Dylan told NetflixJunkie, framing the show’s will-they-won’t-they tension against stakes that are very literally life and death.

Thomas says the cases double as a stress test for the relationship. Tuppence charges ahead; Tommy tries to pump the brakes. That push-pull is why they broke up before—and why they click now.

“They find themselves in really dangerous and sticky situations, and I suppose the way they get into those situations is very much down to their personalities. Tuppence will barrel ahead… while Tommy is always there trying to put the brakes on. They had known each other 10 years ago and had been in a relationship… But now they're rediscovering one another through these crimes. They have a great appreciation for each other, but they still manage to frustrate each other too.”

Unlike Christie’s genius lone wolves—Poirot and Miss Marple—this duo doesn’t have preternatural instincts. They muddle through, together, and that’s the point.

“You have a character like Poirot… the magic of a character like that is that you feel they kind of know everything before it happens… Tommy and Tuppence don’t have that,”

Dylan said. Thomas added,

“They do not know what they are doing. They are amateurs.”

“They’re amateurs who are just tumbling into these situations, and they need each other… it is chaotic and haphazard, but also charming… Hopefully, that is what makes it feel relatable… With Tommy and Tuppence, you really feel like they are figuring it out as they go,”

Dylan continued.

Appearance vs. reality

That classic Christie theme gets a modern spin here—right down to the way Tommy and Tuppence present themselves when they collide again. Both are fronting: she wants him to think L.A. treated her well; he’s hiding how stuck he is with his book. And neither wants to admit the chemistry is still there.

“These characters definitely have the version of themselves that they want the other person to see, and then there is the version… that’s actually real… They’re both putting on this front… and that goes even deeper because they’re definitely not honest with each other about how they feel. They are both, in a way, the one that got away for the other,”

Thomas said.

The masks extend to the suspects they meet along the way. Dylan pointed to a character named Archie St. Vincent—arriving around the third or fourth episode—as an example of how the show plays with facades and hidden motives.

“All these people… present themselves in one way, and then you slowly learn that there’s something else going on. It’s all about appearance versus reality… it makes you feel like a murderer could be hiding in plain sight,”

he said.

Tommy & Tuppence streams exclusively on BritBox in the U.S. starting September 15.