Stopping at nothing
The team behind Towards Zero, the BBC’s latest Agatha Christie adaptation, explain why this ‘sexy’ show may surprise viewers who think they know what to expect from the celebrated author’s stories.
One victim. Multiple suspects – all together in one location. And a race against time to identify the killer before they can strike again…
If you hadn’t already read the standfirst, you’d almost certainly guess from the above paragraph that we’re talking about an Agatha Christie plot. And while Towards Zero may not be among the legendary author’s best-known works, it certainly has all the classic Christie characteristics that fans know and love.
Originally published in 1944, the book has previously been adapted for the stage, radio and both the big and small screens, most recently as an episode of French TV series Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie in 2019. Now, its most high-profile adaptation to date has debuted on the BBC.
The show is set in the English countryside in 1936. After going through a scandalous celebrity divorce, Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and his now ex-wife Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland) make the unthinkable decision to spend a summer together at Gull’s Point, their childhood home and the coastal estate of Nevile’s aunt, Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston). With unfinished business between the former childhood sweethearts – plus the presence of Nevile’s new wife Kay (Mimi Keene), the woman at the centre of their divorce – tensions are running high.
Add to this a long-suffering lady’s companion, a mysterious gentleman’s valet, an exiled cousin with a grudge, a venerable family lawyer, an inquisitive orphan and a French con man, and soon there will be murder. A troubled detective must rediscover his purpose to untangle a toxic web of jealousy, deceit and dysfunction. Can he solve the crime before another victim meets their death?
All will be revealed by the climax of this three-part miniseries, which is produced by Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Ltd – the same duo that has previously been behind fellow Christie adaptations including The Pale Horse, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, And Then There Were None and Murder is Easy. Rachel Bennette (World on Fire, Ripper Street) is the writer, while Sam Yates – best known for his work in theatre – is the director.
One of the things that sets Towards Zero apart from other Christie adaptations – and something that may surprise viewers – is that there is no murder in the early stages of the story. In fact (spoiler alert), the entirety of the first episode goes by without a killing, meaning that in addition to the inevitable whodunit, the audience spends a large part of the show wondering which of the characters will soon meet their untimely demise, and how.
“I decided pretty quickly that it was going to be a kind of ‘who’s gonna do it?’ that becomes a whodunit,” Yates says. “So the idea was to make both parts of that as pleasurable as possible. Before anyone’s died, you’re going, ‘Who could kill? Who could murder?’ You’re looking at everyone and hopefully feeling that everyone has a motive and everyone could do that.
“And then later on in the series, when death does come – you know, it’s Christie, there’s going to be a murder – it clicks into perhaps a more familiar whodunit mode. So really the job was to make it as tense [as possible].”
The tantalising premise was one of the reasons Jackson-Cohen, star of Prime Video drama Wilderness and hit 2020 horror film The Invisible Man, was drawn to the series. “What’s so interesting about this is it’s such an interesting setup, this sort of ‘who’s going to do it?’ and then ‘who did do it?’” he says. “And there’s a real sexiness to it, and not just sexual tension; there’s this very threatening feel that comes through and really starts to build in episode two. It’s a palpable thing.
Also notable in comparison to other Christie stories is that Towards Zero doesn’t feature any of the author’s most famous investigator characters at its heart. There’s no Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple here, but rather Inspector James Leach, the nephew of better-known Christie character Superintendent Battle, who appeared in five of her novels.
Adding a further twist, the new adaptation’s version of Leach – played by The Americans star Matthew Rhys – is actually inspired by and combined with another character from the book, namely Angus MacWhirter.
“Rachel [Bennette], and she wouldn’t mind me saying this, I’m sure, always felt very intimidated by adapting the book,” says producer Rebecca Durbin of Mammoth Screen. “But she has such an incredible command of character. And she fell in love with Angus McWhirter, and that became our version of James Leach, who became central to the solving of the puzzle.”
Like Jackson-Cohen, Durbin acknowledges the show’s “sexiness,” again giving it something that perhaps not many people would associate with Agatha Christie. “We talked a lot about ‘sexy Christie.’ When I read the scripts, I was like, it’s so modern, the situations are so modern,” she says. “And when Sam came in, I think Sam does sexy incredibly. It was like, ‘Oh, so this is how visually you bring this to life.’
“The Lucy Worsley book [the UK historian’s biography of Christie] talks about Agatha and her modern attitudes towards sex and female desire, and that was something we definitely took into account – how that was a powerful thing and also a dangerous thing.”
Meanwhile, outside the early courtroom sequences and some flashbacks, almost all of the show’s action unfolds in a fictional setting on England’s south coast, and largely within the grounds of Lady Tressilian’s stately home, Gull’s Point.
Filming took place last summer in Bristol and Devon, and particularly on the latter’s Burgh Island. The geography is key to the plot, with Gull’s Point sitting on an island across the bay from the luxurious Easterhead Bay Hotel, another location that plays an important part in the story.
Of course, filming on a real island meant challenges for the team working on the show. “I remember our commissioner saying, ‘You do understand the production implications of filming on an island, which is only accessible by a sea tractor, when it gets dark…’” says Durbin. “It was like some kind of SAS, survival-of-the-fittest type of thing, getting all of the crew off the island, on a tractor, in the dark.”
And it wasn’t just the production team who were affected, with the script calling for the cast to spend plenty of time in the rather chilly waters surrounding the island. “We had to stop filming one day because it was so cold,” says Jackson-Cohen. “Every single time we get into the sea – which is a lot in this – you can see a twinge of the hand from the freezing cold.”
Portraying a successful tennis pro in Towards Zero, the Haunting of Hill House actor also had to take lessons before picking up his racquet on screen – a task he admits he didn’t exactly ace.
“Let me tell you something: my tennis is shockingly bad,” he says with a grin. “Really quite embarrassingly so. They sent me off to tennis lessons and I thought, ‘I’ve never really played tennis, but how hard can it be?’ Very hard.
“I actually started panicking because there was an awful lot of chat about how [Nevile] is kind of like the David Beckham of tennis. But he can actually play and I can’t, so am I just going to look like an idiot? But the way they shot it – if you had been there, I looked so ridiculous – you kind of can’t tell. The thing that gives me away is my dancing in episode two, because that’s also shocking…”
Jackson-Cohen would have done well to ask for some tips from co-star Hyland, whose breakout role came as a young tennis star in Prime Video drama Fifteen-Love before parts in Netflix’s Black Doves and newly released Disney+ period drama A Thousand Blows.
Like her co-star and Durbin, Hyland points to the show’s sexual chemistry as part of its appeal, particularly when it comes to her character Audrey, her ex-husband Nevile and his new wife Kay. “There’s sexual tension between all three, in a sense, because the sexuality of all three of them couldn’t exist without one of them. Kay being there entices something in [Nevile and Audrey], and Audrey being the ‘other woman’ entices something in them.
“It very much looks at the dynamics of jealousy and how linked to lust it, and it’s actually a part of lust, which I find interesting.”
It’s one of many enduring themes that helps to keep this 80-year-old story relevant to a modern audience, as noted by Agatha Christie Ltd chief James Prichard, the great-grandson of the late author.
“It’s a great story with great people in it,” he says of Towards Zero, which is distributed by Fifth Season. “And I think it’s a very modern story. I’m afraid people haven’t changed all that much over the years, and we still have the same issues of love and jealousy and money and all those kinds of things.
“Agatha Christie stories do still work. And this is one of the best.”
RELATED CONTENT
Suchet’s small-screen success
Poirot star David Suchet returns to the small screen after a seven-year absence with a leading role in The Au Pair. He explains why this Channel 5 thriller lured him back to acting and reflects on the role of his lifetime playing Agatha Christie’s iconic sleuth.
Staying in with cosy crime
After a decade of grisly, gritty serialised dramas on streaming platforms, is the traditional murder mystery back in fashion? DQ speaks to the makers of five cosy crime dramas to find out why the genre remains popular with viewers and the secrets to their shows’ success.
Killer adaptation
As Agatha Christie adaptation Murder is Easy arrives on the BBC, director Meenu Gaur and executive producer James Prichard discuss making this two-part murder mystery and why the celebrated author’s work remains timeless.
tagged in: Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie Ltd, BBC, BritBox International, Ella Lily Hyland, Fifth Season, James Prichard, Mammoth Screen, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Sam Yates, Towards Zero