And Then There Were
None
Director:
Year: 2016
Rating: 8.0
Yet one more BBC adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel and it is deliciously
dark and morbid. This is an extremely well-known plot having been turned
into films three times before that I know of - in 1945, 1965 and in 1974.
I have seen the first two and very much enjoyed them but am unfamiliar with
the 1974 version which for some reason transfers the location to the Iranian
desert! Fortunately, I saw the two adaptations years ago and I had no memory
of who the murderer was. Which I was grateful for because it is quite suspenseful.
It had me baffled till about five murders in.
This was scripted again by Sarah Phelps who seems to be making a career out
of her TV adaptations of Christie - this is her fifth novel. In all of them
she takes Christie into much darker territory. Though this is certainly one
of Christie's more gruesome fatalistic novels with what I imagine is her
highest kill count and one that Phelps sticks to very closely. With the use
of flashbacks she slowly makes everyone very far from innocent and some downright
evil, a house of horror. Both the 1945 and the 1965 versions went quite soft
in the exact same way at the end; this one doesn't and it is quite a shock
as I was expecting the same. This one is how Christie ends it. With a silent
scream into the nothingness.
I am sure everyone is familiar with the story - it is a doozy - but in case
you don't - ten strangers are invited under various pretexts to an island
by a host they don't know. Once on the island with no way to get off they
realize their host isn't showing up - and they begin to be killed off one
by one in a manner close to the doggerel poem Ten Little Injuns. At some
point they begin to realize that one of them must be the killer. In three
parts and at three hours it is perhaps a bit long but the murders are well-paced,
the acting is quite good though I only know Charles Dance in the cast and
as they begin to crack up it becomes an interesting study of people under
great stress. What would I do I wonder - probably barricade myself in my
room with water and bread until help came. If it ever would. This may be
the best version of the book made yet.