Towards Zero–Where is Agatha?
This three-part BritBox series, Towards Zero is set in 1930s England, based upon the 1944 Agatha Christie’s eponymous novel. It opens with Lady Tressilian’s lawyer, Frederick Treves (Clarke Peters), giving a warning, a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of events to come:
“Every murder has its moment of origin, its point zero.”
Set at the seaside mansion of Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston), she is bedridden and annoyed by everything and everyone in her life. Years before, Lady Tressilian watched from her window as her husband’s yacht capsized at sea. She hasn’t left her bed since. Only her handsome but feckless nephew Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a champion tennis player and playboy, lightens her spirits. She has raised Neville since he was orphaned, and she terrorizes all who are under her domain, including –or perhaps especially–him.
Now recently divorced and married to his beautiful but mysterious new wife, Kay (Mimi Keene), Neville wishes to honeymoon at Lady Tressilian’s opulent estate , presumably to reconcile with his first wife, Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland), and to further ingratiate himself with his aunt.
The family dysfunction and raging interpersonal conflicts simmer long before the murder takes place. Unfinished business prevails along with the nihilism and narcissism of this obscenely wealthy family.
Enter troubled, suicidal Inspector Leach (Matthew Rhys of “The Americans”) to investigate the murder. The one person Leach seems capable of emotionally connecting with is Sylvia (Grace Doherty), a teenage orphan who is equally homeless in a world in which she is a “misfit”.
Delaying the murder (which doesn’t take place until half-way through the second episode) may have served the purpose of giving the series time to explore means, motive, and opportunity–what Agatha Christie is famous for. What brought her characters to their pitiful state of mind? However, this is a missed opportunity. The viewer isn’t witness to the nature of the characters except for their later identification as victims and/or suspects. The red herrings don’t achieve their intended purpose.
The only reason to watch Towards Zero is for the exceptional performances by all cast members, particularly Matthew Rhys and the virtually unrecognizable Anjelica Huston. Both deliver memorable,vulnerable yet brilliant performances that seldom go mainstream or conventional, and are integral to making Towards Zero watchable at all.
This may be one of the dullest, meandering Agatha Christie dramas ever produced. More questions are raised than answered, a story so disjointed that when the murderer is revealed, this viewer was both surprised and disappointed. And delaying the murder until half-way through the series seems like a bait-and-switch marketing ploy. The cleverness of the murderer seems so contrived that even Freud wouldn’t be able to psychoanalyze the mental state to make some sense of motivation.
Flawed construction of character development makes Towards Zero a weak and unclear story of murder. Where is Agatha Christie?
Availability: BritBox