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While recent adaptations of Agatha Christie novels have taken a lot of liberties with the mustery author’s stories, they still tend to hew to a traditional structure: We meet the players, a murder is committed — maybe more than one — then the story’s protagonist figures out who did it. Towards Zero is a little different. But is it a little too different?
Opening Shot: A closeup of a man in a tuxedo. He says, “I like a good detective story, but you know, they begin in the wrong place. They begin with the murder. No,no… The murder is the end. The story begins long before, years before, when the murder is seeded, the ‘point zero,’ if you will.”
The Gist: The man making that speech is Frederick Treves (Clarke Peters), and among the people at the dinner party table with him is his client Neville Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), one of England’s best professional tennis players. Treves was the barrister for Neville’s divorce from his childhood sweetheart Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland). The trial made tabloid headlines and was the story of 1936 in the UK. Audrey accused Neville of having an affair with Kay Elliot (Mimi Keene), which he at first denied. But then he decides to express his love for Kay in court, even if it means he loses the case. Neville and Kay eventually get married.
In the meantime, in the sleepy seaside town of Saltcreek, Devon, Lady Tresslian (Anjelica Huston) lies in her bed, having stories about her nephew Neville’s divorce read to her by her hired “friend,” Mary Aldin (Anjana Vasan). Mary has been secretly writing letters to Thomas Royde (Jack Farthing), another nephew of Lady Tresslian’s, who’s been exiled to the family plantation on the Malay Peninsula. He desperately wants to come home, but Lady Tresslian will not speak to him under any circumstances.
Since Audrey grew up at Tresslian’s estate, having been orphaned as a child, she still wants to visit despite the divorce. She decides to come in August, thinking Neville will be on tour. But, in an effort to let bygones be bygones, Neville decides that hey and Kay should come in August, as well. Treves, a family friend, is also invited, along with his 14-year-old ward Sylvia (Grace Doherty). Mary takes it upon herself to invite Thomas, despite the lady’s vehement objections. Also attending is Mac (Adam Hugill), who ingratiated himself to Neville during the divorce trail; he is now security for Neville and Kay.
We also are introduced to Inspector Leach (Matthew Rhys), a police detective in Saltcreek who has to field constant complaints from Lady Tresslian about the debauchery going on at the hotel across the bay from her. He is a regular at the hotel bar, where he’s propositioned by a sex worker, Louis Morel (Khalil Ben Gharbia). For the most part, though, Leach is burned out and suicidal.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We can compare Towards Zero with any number of recent Agatha Christie adaptations, like Murder Is Easy.Our Take: Written by Rachel Bennette and directed by Sam Yates, Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero has been reconfigured and reimagined a bit, with the location changed as well as some of the characters — Inspector Leach, for instance, isn’t part of the book. While the general theme of the story is the same, centering around the uncomfortable visit to Lady Tresslian’s estate by Neville, his new wife and his ex-wife, it feels more like the story is written to be less of a murder mystery and more of a prestige drama about these characters than anything else.
What’s a good indication of this? The entire first hour of the three-hour miniseries goes by and the only body that pops up is in an incidental scene where an ambitious swimmer is pulled from the bay, taken under by the current. Lady Tresslian, confined to her bedroom by crippling anxiety, decries how many people die in the water. It feels like that’s going to be a significant factor down the road, but in the first episode, it’s still mostly a detail that feels incidental instead of instrumental to the plot.
Call us old-fashioned, but not seeing a murder victim in the first hour of an Agatha Christie series just feels wrong. There’s a reason why the story structure that Christie used most of the time has been imitated for decades and why her novels have been adapted for TV and films, despite the fact that she’s been gone for almost 50 years.
For those who might pipe up, “But that’s the point of the book!”, we would retort that it would have been just fine to have the murder occur right at the end of the first episode, just to feed the desire of mystery fans to kick the investigation into gear at some point in the early going.
It makes for a slow and draggy first hour, where we see a lot of backstory but no sleuthing or solving of anything. The performances of the cast are compelling, especially Huston as the officious Lady Tresslian and Rhys as the sad-sack Leach (who plays sad better than Matthew Rhys?), but the performances don’t really overcome how boring we thought that first hour was.
Sex and Skin: None.Parting Shot: After being thrown out of the hotel bar, Leach stands on the edge of a cliff. He’s about to turn back when he sees Sylvia, which prompts him to turn back around and make like he’s about to jump.Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Anjana Vasan’s Mary has to take the most verbal abuse from Lady Tresslian, but we like the hope she has in her unusual relationship with Thomas.
Our Call: SKIP IT. While the performances in Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero are worth watching, we get the feeling most viewers who aren’t hardcore Christie fans will be to bored to hang in for the entire 3-hour run.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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