Perhaps Sarah Phelps, the creator of most of the Agatha Christie adaptations to grace our screens recently, is still recovering from writing her heartbreaking masterpiece The Sixth Commandment. Did it emotionally pulverise her as much as it did viewers? Or maybe the Christie fans who hated her departures from tradition finally became too vociferous to ignore.
Whatever the reason, the old BBC Christie kit has been taken down from the loft, dusted off and a full return to pre-Phelpsian form made with Towards Zero, adapted by Rachel Bennette and directed by Sam Yates. Gorgeous prewar clothes are draped on gorgeous people topped with bobs or Brylcreem. The gorgeous people gather at a country estate – let’s call it Denouement Hall – ruled by an embittered widow, while spivs and suspects gather at a vulgar hotel on an opposite hill. A murder occurs. An inspector investigates. An array of persons, possibilities, motives and countermotives have been assembled by the unerring writer’s hand: a love triangle is triangling, a will left half-revised, a family secret is emerging from the shadows, a housekeeper is drugged, a lady’s maid is put upon and a new manservant is a shady sort. Even if you’re no great fan or an arch traditionalist, you find yourself lingering long enough for your mystery glands to start juicing and suddenly find yourself locked in for the duration. Like any character in her books, you are powerless – Agatha will have you right where she wants you.
We open with a celebrity divorce playing out in the papers. Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), dashing tennis star, cad, bounder and potential inheritor of Denouement Hall, is casting off an icy blonde – Audrey, played by Ella Lily Hyland – in favour of a pouting brunette, Kay (Mimi Keene, formerly splendiferous mean girl Ruby Matthews in Sex Education). For reasons that passeth all understanding, the three of them decide it would be a good idea to take a holiday together at Denouement Hall. It is owned and overseen by Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston, with all the power at her command), who has been largely Lady Havisham-ing it ever since she watched from her bedroom window as her husband, Sir Matthew Tressilian, sank with his yacht in the local bay 15 years ago. She is not best pleased by Nevile or either of these women – “a brood of vipers”.
Her paid companion Mary (Anjana Vasan) defies Lady T’s direct orders and invites Matthew’s estranged nephew Thomas (Jack Farthing), with whom she has fallen in love via correspondence, to join the merry gang. She is going to be sorry when it turns out he harbours love for another and a deep desire for some Nevile-based retribution. Lady T calls the family lawyer, Mr Treves (Clarke Peters), to stay as well, to make sure all the vipers’ longing-slash-poisonous looks and elaborate smoking of cigarettes by water fountains at twilight don’t get out of hand, and to rewrite that there will. He brings with him his orphan ward Sylvia (Grace Doherty), who has been expelled from school for thievery.
Sylvia is the first to encounter the inspector. She watches as James Leach (Matthew Rhys), pursued by the black dog of depression, throws himself off a cliff. She raises the alarm and he survives. Will the call thereafter to solve a murder at the big house restore him to himself, or can he not be saved?
You are unlikely, in any real sense, to care. But that’s OK. That’s not what traditional Christie, traditionally done, is there for. Christie is something between a chess game and a crossword puzzle made flesh. The zero of the title refers to the moment the murder was set in train. Can you work out when it was, what Christie is doing, where she’s going and what the answer is before the final move, the final clue, the final page? Was it Nevile with a golf club, Mary with PMT, Audrey furious about her lost compact, a vulgar guest from the hotel? I can’t play chess or solve crosswords, so I expect to remain baffled, but gently entertained, to the very end. I hope devoted fans enjoy every minute.
• Towards Zero aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now
