Review by C.J. Bunce
For all the appeal of Agatha Christie stories, once you get outside the more popular stories you’ll find some quirky tales, some typical detective fare. You’ll find the latter in the new BritBox three-part limited series Towards Zero. It veers significantly from the original, but keeps most of the characters in their respective roles as far as the murder victims and the whodunnit. The big win is Anjelica Huston as the bedridden house mistress Lady Tressilian–a classic Dame Judi Dench-type role we haven’t seen yet from Huston. Like a character out of a Dickens or du Maurier novel, she’s perfect. But the series draws more from F. Scott Fitzgerald, including a stand-out performance by Black Doves’ Ella Lily Hyland as a modern woman influenced by Daisy Buchanan. Unfortunately the series doesn’t find its footing until its third and final episode, which is actually great fun and makes the show worth watching.
The quirk of the show may be that star Oliver Jackson-Cohen is too typecast as the arrogant bad boy. His role as Nevile Strange isn’t that far removed from his role in Surface (reviewed here), delivering the kind of smarm delivered for years by Armie Hammer. Killer or not, the Mr. Selfridge and The Haunting of Hill House actor is difficult to like in roles like this. Here Nevile Strange is nephew of Huston’s Lady Tressilian, a playboy tennis playing sap who brings his ex-wife and current wife to Tressilian’s big estate for a vacation. What was Christie thinking? She definitely was one for cringe.
The first two hours are all set-up for the third act, a Clue game of suspects, ultimately lined up to watch a match between Nevile and the story’s detective, one rumpled Inspector Leach, played by the always rumpled Matthew Rhys (Saturday Night, Perry Mason). Here Rhys dazzles, maybe better than ever before, leaning into his role and maybe even over-selling it, as if his eye is on the Emmy Award. The rest of the cast is more reserved, so he’s a welcome relief, especially as he befriends an orphan at the estate, a young thief played by Grace Doherty.
As for the suspects… Anjana Vasan (Spider-Man: Far From Home) plays Tressilian’s companion. Mimi Keene (EastEnders) is the second Mrs. Strange. Jack Farthing (Poldark) plays a long-lost character who shows up precisely during the Stranges’ vacation. Adam Hugill (The Watch) plays another long-lost character who also shows up precisely during the Stranges’ vacation. Khalil Ben Gharbia (Mary & George) plays a stranger at the local pub. Jackie Clune (Ghosts) is Tressilian’s maid who dotes on Nevile. And Clarke Peters (John Wick) is Tressilian’s old confidante and lawyer.
But along with Anjelica Huston viewers are going to be drawn to Ella Lily Hyland’s rejected first wife Audrey Strange. Audrey and Nevile are portrayed as that perfect jet set duo of the past. Credit goes to the team that created her hairstyle for each day of shooting. Hyland steels the scene with every appearance and every frame looks like some kind of vintage magazine cover. And like the rquirements of any cast member in a Christie adaptation, she can play both the victim and villain well (how else would we think everyone was a suspect?).
Is there more style than substance here? Definitely. Cinematographer Laura Bellingham (The Bay) gets the old British cozy mystery right with every angle. The costumes by Charlotte Mitchell (Doctor Who, Sherlock, The Pale Horse, Galavant) are grand and the music by Benji Merrison, Will Slater, and Isobel Waller-Bridge even better. Did writer Rachel Bennette need to make the changes from the original? Probably not, but then we wouldn’t had had the series’ best character interplay. Could act one and two been tighter? I think so. One thing to consider is the use of F-bombs in Christie adaptations. Christie didn’t use them although some of her contemporaries did, so she could have. So why add them now? It makes the adaptations less her. Keep an eye out for Sam Yates, a promising young director who directed all three episodes.
Not in the league of the adaptation of the picture-perfect TV series Whatever Happened to Evans? (reviewed here), but a step up from The Pale Horse (reviewed here) and The ABC Murders (reviewed here), catch all three episodes of Towards Zero now streaming on BritBox. Compare it to the original novel, available here at Amazon.
