Frances Tucker

Why, oh why, oh why? If they don’t like Agatha Christie’s story why don’t they write their own? Don’t they see that if the whole atmosphere throughout is fraught and depressing there is no relief and the overall effect just feels miserable. The strength of Christie’s world view is that there’s a pleasant normal world as the basis and events threaten that. This house of people is so outlandishly dysfunctional that it would seem like there should be a murder once a week. By the third episode it seems almost comical, and I lost interest. Many competent performances and the usual overly glamourised production means that if you want something vaguely suspenseful and vaguely entertaining, you could do worse.

Mostly an enjoyable set-piece that pays a little more attention to what todays audience will think looks lovely than the anchoring of the story in any kind of recognizable world view. I understand why they have an earl’s daughter riding a heavy hunter down the village street in an afternoon tea frock, that sort of thing marks her out as a free spirit. The small problem I have is that the story Christie told in this novel was very well put together, it was written during her best plotting period. This show is really untidy. Why they had to introduce an extra menacing presence is something that is difficult to figure out and difficult to approve of- it’s as though he keeps wandering in from a different movie. He completely pulls focus from the main villains who are supposed to be charismatic but both are not given enough to do. Plus a terrible miscasting of Moira. I also just realized that the presence of all those extra accessories to the crimes in the sanatorium marks Dr. Nicholson out to be either a terrible medical director as in what are all these people doing all over his shop coshing people and cackling evilly, or he’s somewhat nefarious himself which is very throwaway. All that said, it’s about as enjoyable as these things tend to be. Miles Jupp was quite good.

This is one of those plots that is based on people keeping secrets from each other that, when you break it down, weren’t necessary. And also people who are under threat casually waltzing off by themselves. Basically by the end I thought they were all stupid. And the killer is supposed to be sympathetic and they’re really not.