‘Whodunnit’ is the contraction of ‘Who has done it?’ and became over the years a subgenre of crime/thriller stories. The term dates back from the in between World War I & II era, considered as the golden age of British crime novels, embodied by Agatha Christie’s work. The ingredients are well-known : a crime (very often a murder), many suspects, a unity of space and time (one location, a few hours or days): a little theater of crime, the typical Hercule Poirot story ! To be fair, we could go back to the end of the ninetieth century, when Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, that can be seen as a tormented and rather asocial version of Poirot, solving the unsolvable, collecting the tiniest details and looking behind the appearances.
The subgenre thrived throughout cinema and TV history thanks to high-end work from Alfred Hitchcock films, Columbo series, Agatha Christie’s cinematic adaptations, masterpieces like ‘Sleuth’, ‘The Name of the Rose’, ‘Usual Suspects’ and the many cinematic adaptations from Agatha Christie’s novels.
Lately, the subgenre went through a new golden age thanks to Rian Johnson and his ongoing ‘Knives Out’ films saga, as well as his beloved series Poker Face, another great iteration of the Whodunnit subgenre, where following Natasha Lyonne as she solved the weekly episode mystery. There are many Whodunnit taking different shapes, leaning into adventure, medical drama and other exciting directions.
When the lost survivors of a plane crash start dying one by one, they must solve the mystery of who is killing them off : in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, Agatha Christie meets Lost ! You can also enjoy a medical show with a strong investigative spine with Watson, as one of history’s greatest detectives turns his attention from solving crimes to solving medical mysteries.
And let’s not forget our classics, with iconic series like Sherlock, building a bridge between the original Whodunnit stories from Conan Doyle and a modern storytelling, or a show like How to Get Away With Murder that revives that good old Hitchcock recipe of setting up the perfect murder …
But if the Whodunnit subgenre teaches you something, it’s that there is no such thing as a perfect murder !
- Watson Season 1 available on Sky Show
- Poker Face Seasons 1 and 2 available on Sky Show
- Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue Season 1 available on Sky Show
- Sherlock Seasons 1 to 4 available on Sky Show
- How to get away with Murder Seasons 1 to 6 available on Sky Show
