![]() ![]() (Dermondy's portrayal of Vera's final desperate and self-serving bargaining with the murderer hopefully has won her some awards.) Maeve Dermondy as Vera delivers a masterful performance as the bad girl who pretends to be a good girl who is far more ruthless, far more of a survivalist, than any of the other characters except possibly Philip (Aidan Turner). One reason is the stellar company: Aidan Turner, Miranda Richardson, Sam Neill, Charles Dance, Toby Stephens. ![]() The viewers learn that Vera and Philip are guiltless of the murderer's accusations (the murderer is killing off people who got away with crimes) and work together to outlive the murderer.Īs stated above, the 2015 miniseries retains the book ending and for a depressing ending with no redeemable features, it holds up surprisingly well. Both movies closely follow their books and scupper the ridiculous notion that Christie had no appreciation or understanding of the dark side of life/literature.įor the play version of And Then There Were None, Christie altered the ending. Both these books have been translated into superb movies, the first starring Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett, the second starring Donald Sutherland. She accomplishes a similar sense of dread in Endless Night and in the unsettling novel Ordeal By Innocence. If anything, the book proves that Christie was capable of a high level of horror/suspense. As the murderer states, The police will arrive to find ten dead bodies and no answer to how it all happened. Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard, the final victims, die when Vera kills him, then hangs herself. It is the perfect master-plan, carried out to perfection by the murderer. But I have to extend kudos to the 2015 miniseries for pulling off the book ending with plausible panache. Generally speaking, I prefer the play ending for reasons that I will list in the next post. It uses the book ending rather than the play ending (Christie wrote both). (If anything, it’s more despairing than the novel, because it eliminates the postscript in which the killer’s confession is found.The 2015 miniseries Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is quite astonishing. Christie’s book, right through to the nihilistic ending. ![]() It also stays relatively faithful to the events and tone of Ms. Once the gathering of the victims has been completed, however, and the murderer goes to work, the series settles into a satisfyingly eerie groove. The close-ups of slabs of meat being hacked apart for dinner and a few forced performances from otherwise reliable actors (especially Anna Maxwell Martin as the servant Ethel Rogers) smack of concept getting in the way of common sense. Rowling - and directed by Craig Viveiros, “None” overdoes the self-conscious creepiness at first. Written by Sarah Phelps - whose other mini-series include “The Crimson Field” and the adaptation of “ The Casual Vacancy” by J. Christie’s cozy mysteries may nod vigorously, wondering why they’re watching an artsy, darkly humorous psychological horror story instead of a comforting whodunit. When one of the 10 asks, “Is there something a tad off here?,” fans of Ms. The recent four-hour BBC mini-series adapted from the book (and being shown on Lifetime starting on Sunday night) takes the strangeness of “And Then There Were None” and runs with it. It’s a mystery without a detective, no Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple to make sense of things - just 10 people trapped on an island, being murdered one by one per the instructions of a macabre nursery rhyme. “And Then There Were None” - the alternate name of the 1939 Agatha Christie novel “Ten Little _” - stands out among her work for more than its startlingly racist original title. ![]()
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