David Walliams to star in new Agatha Christie BBC drama

The actor will play one part of duo Tommy and Tuppence in BBC's new drama 'Partners in Crime'

David Walliams has signed up to play Tommy from Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence detective duo (Anthony Devlin/PA)

David Walliams has secured a role on the upcoming six-parter Partners in Crime, adapted from Agatha Christie's work, which is expected to run toward the end of 2015.

The BBC has secured the rights to Agatha Christie's estate. And to mark the author's 125th anniversary will be bringing a whole range of programmes to the screen.

Walliams will be portraying Tommy, one half of Christie's detective duo. The storyline for Partners in Crime will be based on two of Christie's novels featuring the married detectives.

"In bringing these thrilling stories to the screen, it is our ambition for Tommy and Tuppence to finally take their rightful place alongside Poirot and Marple as iconic Agatha Christie characters," Walliams explained.

No names have been tapped yet for the role of Tuppence.

Previously Christie's Partners in Crime was adapted into a 1983 series which ran on ITV. The BBC have now secured the rights to Christie's estate, bringing her work over to the broadcaster.

Sarah Phelps will be adapting Christie's most-read book And Then There Were None into a three-part drama. The book, which is about 10 strangers trapped on an island and killed one by one, sold over 100 million copies around the world.

But the BBC's Christie schedule will not just be adaptations of Christie's stories; documentaries about the author are also in the pipeline.

The BBC's drama commissioning controller Ben Stephenson expressed his thrill over the upcoming programmes, "I am delighted that the BBC is going to have a long-term relationship with the works of Agatha Christie - both the BBC and Christie are as brilliantly British as it is possible to get."

Until last year, ITV had a longstanding Poirot series starring David Suchet as the title character. The broadcaster also has a Marple series, which was originally based on Christie's Miss Marple, although after the first six episodes, plots were taken from Christie's other stories. The programme has had a run of six series as of 2014.

None of the terms of the BBC's deal with the Christie estate have been revealed, although the broadcaster positions itself as the "new home of TV adaptations in the UK." This does mean an end to the ITV's Marple.