Matthew Rhys’s Subtle Performance Grounds Atmospheric Agatha Christie Adaptation Towards Zero

Agatha Christie is the gold standard when it comes to mystery stories, as evidenced by the fact that—much like authors Jane Austen or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—the entertainment industry can’t seem to stop adapting her work for the screen. In recent years, new takes on classics like And Then There Were None, Witness for the Prosecution, and The Pale Horse have added a grittier texture to some of the author’s most familiar stories, reimagining them for a modern audience used to darker contemporary themes, more overt politics, and coarse language. Such adaptations were fairly divisive amongst casual viewers and Christie purists, so it’s a relief to say that the latest BBC/BritBox offering Towards Zero gets back to basics. 

Based on one of Christie’s lesser-known works, the story mixes a deadly house party, a steamy love triangle, and an inheritance squabble with gorgeous Devonshire vistas, lush costumes, and moody atmosphere. The three-part series takes a fair amount of liberties with the technical details of the original story’s plot—the novel’s Inspector Battle is jettisoned in favor of of his detective nephew, and there’s more overt sex—and though it’s technically set in the 1930s, the story determinedly ignores the politics of its period. No one is hiding secret fascist leanings, and the looming threat of World War II is entirely absent. Instead, this is a series about very attractive people gathering at an extremely pretty country locale, so protected by wealth and privilege that the rest of the world apparently doesn’t exist for them. On the plus side, it means we can enjoy the picturesque setting and beautiful fashion without feeling bad about it. A murder mystery in which the actual murder is the least part of the series we’re watching, Towards Zero is a largely ephemeral, but entertaining escape. 

The story follows wealthy, playboy-esque tennis star Neville Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who has cheated on his cool, posh wife Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland) with the vaguley grifter-ish, but equally beautiful Kay (Mimi Keene). Their divorce trial is headline news in all the papers, as is Neville’s subsequent wedding to Kay, but the group’s messy love triangle cannot be concluded by anything so basic as a judicial decree. Despite being able to go pretty much anywhere, Neville decides that spending his honeymoon at his and Audrey’s childhood home of Gull’s Point—a gorgeous ancestral pile on the Devonshire coast—during the same month his ex is planning to visit their aunt is a smart decision, and Kay goes along with it, because of course she does. What follows is a character study of a group of extremely unhappy people, who all seem to be engaging in a competition to make each other as miserable as possible. There’s plenty of pouting, open glaring, and snide remarks, enough that this show likely could have worked as a dysfunctional Succession-style family drama without any of the mystery elements thrown on top. (Particularly since the long-expected murder doesn’t take place until well into the series’ second episode.) 

Gull’s Point is ruled over by the icy widow Lady Tressilian (a perfectly imperious Anjelica Huston), who, with the help of her paid companion Mary (Anjana Vasan), the sly family lawyer Treves (Clark Peters), and loyal housekeeper, Mrs. Barrett (Jackie Clune), attempts to impose her will on the mass of orphans, nephews, wards, and relations that seem to fill the house. But when a body is discovered, a series of family secrets begins to unspool, and the already mentally struggling Inspector Leach (Matthew Rhys) must attempt to make sense of it all. 

The bulk of the series’ characters are little more than archetypes: The posh tennis pro, the society wife, the other woman, the disowned relative, the loyal servant, the mousy companion, the surprise illegitimate child, and the bitchy grand dame who rules over them all. They’re all terribly fun to watch, of course, but beware looking for much in the way of depth here, or even for the various iterations of their toxic, manipulative, or outright cruel relationships to make a ton of sense. Every character who isn’t Leach is generally unlikeable, running the gamut from “simply annoying” to “hoping they’re the murderer’s next target”. But perhaps that’s the reason it’s so enjoyable to watch them all suffer.