Kenneth Branagh‘s Murder on the Orient Express is, of course, set aboard an elegant, first-class train chugging through Europe but also, like the original Agatha Christie thriller, in the early 1930s. Among the elite, well-heeled travellers is an African American doctor (i.e., “Dr. Arbuthnot”), played by Hamilton Tony Award-winner Leslie Odom Jr.. This is a completely accurate and representative bit of casting for the time period, of course. I can’t imagine why Alfred Hitchcock didn’t include a black physician character when he cast The Lady Vanishes (’38). As I understand it early ’30s Europe was teeming with wealthy, refined, richly educated black dudes.

Seriously: Just as Hamilton reimagined America’s 18th Century founders and architects as non-white and non-European, Branagh has decided to reimagine the Christie realm, at least in this one respect.