Appointment With Agatha discussion

I finally had a chance to watch the new BBC adaptation of Towards Zero last night.

Spoilers abound below.



We read this one back in 2023 - it is ostensibly part of the Superintendent Battle subseries, although he doesn't enter the book until quite late, if I recall correctly.

Things I liked about the adaptation:

The newer Christie adaptations are relentlessly stylish, and this one is no exception. Both Audrey and Kay are quite beautiful, and the wardrobes are spectacular.

They kept the same murderer! This is by no means a foregone conclusion with this adaptations (Ordeal by Innocence, I'm looking at you).

The motive remained basically consistent.

The things I don't love about the adaptation:

They omit Battle entirely, and really jumble up the characters. Inspector Leach is the local detective investigating the murder of Lady Tresillian, and he is sort of a mashup of Battle and aspects of McWhirter. The writer brings Sylvia (Battle's daughter) much more into the book, but connects her to Mr. Treve. She is an unnecessary addition, but I ended up rather liking the character.

There is a random addition of an illegitimate son that I didn't like at all. It was an effort to add an additional suspect, but I felt it didn't work.

The biggest problem that I had with the adaptation, though, is that it altered very important character traits that provide the backbone of the mystery.

First, Audrey. Adaptation Audrey, while stunning, bears almost no resemblance to book Audrey. Book Audrey was quiet and almost colorless. She was restrained to the point of repressed. She also lives her life in abject fear of Neville because she knows something about him that no one else really understands - he is a dangerous psychopath. She figures out what is happening - she is a small animal who can see the trap closing on her - and she is terrified. She is not in love with him.

Adaptation Audrey, on the other hand, is an sexy, scheming woman who is still in love with Neville and who intentionally seduces him away from his new wife.

They also totally sexed up the entire things, which is inconsistent with Audrey's character. It would be easy to say that Agatha would be shocked by it, but frankly, I'm not sure she would have been - she was certainly no prude (after all, she married a man more than a decade her junior).

Inspector Leach, who has known Neville for all of 3 days, has the insight into his character that she entirely lacks after being married to him. (Weirdly, also, I'm not sure that Audrey had any lines at all in the second episode. Her primary role seemed to be looking beautiful and sexy and staring into the camera). Her character was much less interesting in the adaptation than in the book itself.

In fact, all of the women were less interesting and nuanced in the adaptation than in the book. Mary Alden, in particular, has much less agency and intelligence than in the original.

I'm not complaining, because I don't expect the adaptations to be as good as the originals, so a basic level of fidelity to the original mystery is about as good as it gets, which was achieved here. However, I do think it's a bit unfortunate that the female characters had so much of what makes them interesting stripped out in favor of looking sexy in a bathing costume.

Is this movie streaming on some OTT like Netflix ,etc .

Mansi wrote: "Is this movie streaming on some OTT like Netflix ,etc ."

I watched it on Brit Box, which I get through Amazon Prime.

I know we read Towards Zero but I can't remember much about it, LOL. Once we're finished with all our monthly reads, I'm going to start the list again.

Thanks for the great review, Christine. I think I'll skip this adaptation.

Well Christine I thought it was totally boring!! I enjoyed the book when we read it and the older tv adaptation was really good but this one did nothing for me. I agree with you on how they changed Audrey and so altered the book completely. I thought there was an awful lot of standing around looking intense, which did nothing for me. I definitely would not rewatch this!

Teresa wrote: "Well Christine I thought it was totally boring!! I enjoyed the book when we read it and the older tv adaptation was really good but this one did nothing for me. I agree with you on how they changed..."

I didn't think it was boring, although it did move rather slowly. I agree with you about the standing around looking intense, though, haha.

I thought that Matthew Rhys was exceptional as Inspector Leach, though.