And then there was one more spiffing Christie confection
‘There were crusty old gents, prim ladies and raffish young bucks, one in the chiselled form of Poldark’s Aidan Turner’
And Then There Were None
The Poirots have all been done. The Marples must be heading that way. One day a commissioning editor for drama will reach for the shelf to pull down another Agatha Christie, secure in the knowledge that the author’s name in the credits provides a guaranteed minimum of several million viewers, and come to a dread realisation. And then there were none left to adapt.
But there are still a few to go, not least And Then There Were None , served up by BBC One as a gripping confection featuring all the most reliable hallmarks of the brand.
A throng of archetypes were summoned as house guests to an isolated Devonian crag – crusty old gents, prim ladies and raffish young bucks, one of them in the chiselled form of Poldark ’s Aidan Turner, fully clothed for this visit to the south-west but no less given to smouldering. Plus, there’s a shady chap exposed as a copper – a plot twist 63 years’ worth of theatregoers will recognise as a trick Christie later used in The Mousetrap .
The guests assembled on Soldier Island, trade starch-stiff dialogue over cocktails and lobster bisque, before embarking on the orderly business of dropping like flies. First to go was the most overtly loathsome, an Adonis swaggeringly played by Douglas Booth with a risqué taste for cocaine and sports cars. Next was the resident dogsbody, a mob-capped underling, whom Anna Maxwell Martin invested with a kind of existential sheepishness. And no wonder, given that her husband (Noah Taylor) kept on belting her. She won’t be the last.
Of the hosts – a Mr and Mrs UN Owen (as in Unknown? Or possibly You Know When?) – there was no sign beyond a disembodied message blaring from a gramophone in the basement, accusing the occupants of having blood on their hands.
There were 10 occupants in all, once the servants were factored in. More senior readers may recall that number from the novel’s original title. It was taken from a nursery rhyme which has long since been considered racially offensive and had its words changed.
Hung on various walls, the sanitised ditty warned each guest that they might be next. “Ten little soldiers standing in a line …” It could be Charles Dance’s superannuated judge in pinstripes, Sam Neill’s frothily mustachioed general, Miranda Richardson’s cold-hearted missionary, Toby Stephens’s uppity surgeon.
For all its familiar elements, and the period stylings laid on by the excellent cast, this didn’t feel like any old Agatha Christie. Set in August 1939 on the cusp of a moral crusade against a real gang of murderers, Christie’s plot invited English society, so smug and self-congratulatory, to take a critical look in the mirror. The script of Sarah Phelps, creator of the First World War drama The Crimson Field – daringly spurned dialogue in a long opening set-up, while no expense was spared in swooping shots supplied by drones. Craig Viveiros, the director, invested the island with a sense of genuine threat, supported by a growling soundtrack. The result leaned as much towards pitch-black psychological thriller as teasing murder mystery. Every character was haunted by visions of gruesome deaths and no one was quite as innocent as they claimed, not even Maeve Dermody’s apparently blameless young miss. “I do not like to be looked at,” she said, a corrugated look on her brow. She may have to get used to it because And Then There Were
None is spiffingly watchable. The first episode of And Then There Were None aired at 9pm on BBC One last night. The second episode is tonight at 9pm, with the final instalment at the same time tomorrow.