Agatha Christie - A Life In Pictures (BBC2): THE biggest mystery surrounding Agatha Christie isn't the whodunit in her novels, but the 11 days she went missing in 1926. Many have tried but none have made complete sense of this period, which remained a blank in the author's own memory.

This drama-documentary about her life - based on documented accounts and her actual works - didn't offer any easy solutions, although there were tantalising clues offering an explanation for her strange behaviour.

Her car was found abandoned. She sent a letter from London. She was eventually located in a hotel in Harrogate, where she'd registered as Mrs Neele. As this was the name of the woman with whom husband Archie had been having an affair, we must assume this was playing on her mind.

Some people suggested the whole thing was a publicity stunt to promote interest in her books and that her loss of memory was convenient but not convincing. Mystery writer Edgar Wallace suggested in a Daily Mail article that it was all staged.

The programme used the tenth anniversary of her London theatre hit The Mousetrap in 1962 as the starting point, and then flitted back and forth between then and her early life.

A key figure was the man with the gun who invaded her dreams, although his sinister appearance made him more of a nightmare. Otherwise, this was a fairly conventional biopic of a woman who rarely spoke to the press. She did only one interview after her mystery disappearance and that was to say she couldn't remember anything.

She had a vivid imagination. Left by her parents to run wild as a child, the young Agatha sought refuge in make-believe. Sister Madge was the writer in the family, while Agatha contemplated a happy marriage that put her husband's life, career and success above everything else.

That changed when her mother suggested that, like Madge, she tried writing a story. Working as a nurse during First World War, she spent time in the hospital dispensary and decided to use her knowledge of poisons in a detective story.

The character of detective Hercule Poirot was inspired by meeting Belgian refugees. The documentary clouded the issue by having the same actor play Poirot and the detective investigating her disappearance.

Her disappearance marked a change in her life. After she and Archie divorced, she married an older man, an archaeologist. Profits from her books helped keep going his archaeological expeditions. Agatha, meanwhile, produced a book a year, a remarkable record for any author, with her 80 mystery books selling two million copies around the world.

This latter part of her life was barely explored here. Olivia Williams as the younger Agatha and Anna Massey as the older one helped fill out the drama, but with the mystery of her disappearance remaining, this was a programme that left you asking questions.

Published: ??/??/2004