The 2026 festive special sends John, Lucy and Henry to a remote Christmas-themed hotel in Yorkshire, where a sudden blackout leaves the guests trapped with a killer.
This guide will grow as the BBC releases scheduling, character, location and story information.
Sir David Suchet—celebrated for playing Hercule Poirot—appears here as a murder suspect. Cut off by a blizzard, John must solve the hotel’s locked-room mystery before Christmas.
this page records only the officially announced premise. The solution, character outcomes and unannounced location details remain outside the archive until broadcast or formal confirmation.
Victim, suspects, motive, clue sequence and solution have not been officially described.
Sir David Suchet is confirmed as a murder suspect. The names, occupations and relationships of the remaining hotel guests have not been announced, so the Casebook does not invent them.
Character links will be added when official credits or the broadcast identify each role.
Roles remain unassigned unless the official announcement names them.
The episode was commissioned by Jon Petrie while he was BBC Director of Comedy Commissioning.
These placeholders make omissions visible instead of presenting speculation as fact.
not yet recorded broadcast. A spoiler-light summary and a separately concealed complete account will be added.
Names, testimony, physical clues, timings and contradictions will be logged after verification.
The locked-room mechanism and John’s reasoning sequence remain unrecorded until transmission.
The Yorkshire story setting is confirmed; the real hotel and production footprint are not.
Score cues, classical references and recurring motifs will be indexed from the completed episode.
Reviews, ratings and audience response will be added from attributable sources after broadcast.
The announcement publishes a first-look photograph of David Mitchell and Sir David Suchet, credited to BBC / Big Talk Studios / Amanda Searle. It is recorded as a licensing candidate and is not reproduced here.
David Suchet told Radio Times that playing a suspect offered a welcome change from playing the detective. Mitchell said in Big Talk’s announcement that he has watched every episode of Poirot several times. These are the actors’ comments on the casting, rather than clues to the suspect’s guilt. Source.
The returning cast includes David Mitchell, Anna Maxwell Martin, Dylan Hughes and Dipo Ola. The broadcast window is December 2026, date not yet announced. Source.