Splash! Or do I mean splat? In fact, it’s both in the case of the BBC’s latest vaguely dirty Agatha Christie update, Towards Zero. Seen from the top of the Devon cliffs where a grand house called Gull’s Point signals entitlement from every last portico, the aquamarine sea is bright and roiling, the rocks below promising death and destruction. But even if a couple of people will indeed get it, their starched pillowcases stained deep red by early morning, the dramatic potential somehow remains unfulfilled. Portentousness is boring when overly laboured, and class war – an obsession of these adaptations – a bit tiresome given that most of us are only watching for the servants and the cocktails, the feeling of a summer’s day that will never end.
The writer, Rachel Bennette, has mucked about with the novel’s plot to no great effect, and it goes like this: in Devon, Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston), a wealthy, childless widow, awaits the arrival of her tennis star nephew Neville (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and both his current wife, Kay (Mimi Keene), and his ex-wife, Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland). Naturally, she doesn’t approve of this arrangement – why do Neville and Kay want to spend their honeymoon with Audrey? – but in fact, this throuple may be the least of her problems.
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