DVD Review: And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None
[DVD And]

Having just reviewed the novel And Then There Were None for last month’s Staff Recommendations page, I finally got around to watching this 2015 TV 3-part mini-series adaptation of the novel, from the libraries’ DVD collection.

The Christie estate has been very proactive in the past few years about encouraging new adaptations, for film and/or TV, of Christie’s works. The novel, And Then There Were None, is the best-selling mystery novel in publishing history, with well over 100,000,000 copies in print, and is one of the top-ten best-selling novels of all time. It has been adapted, in both accurate and highly modified forms, numerous times over the years for film and TV, but the last such filmed version was in 1989. This 2015 made-for-TV version features an all-star cast of British film and TV performers, including Charles Dance (Rebecca) as Judge Wargrave, Aiden Turner (Poldark) as Philip Lombard, Toby Stephens as Dr. Armstrong, Burn Gorman (Torchwood) as Detective Blore and Miranda Richardson as Emily Brent. The novel has gone through several edits over the years, with changes made to both the title and some of the plot elements in the name of racial and cultural sensitivity. This mini-series adapts the most recent iteration of that novel, with the setting being Soldier Island, and the ten disappearing figurines being stylized soldiers.

The plot in a nutshell — ten diverse individuals with no apparent connection to each other, all accept mysterious invitations for a week at a remote island estate. Once they are all “trapped” on the island, with no means of leaving and no means of communicating with the mainland, they discover that they’ve all been lured there on false pretenses — a recorded message accuses each of them of being guilty of at least one murder, which they “got away with” without justice being served. Immediately, what was an usual situation becomes a highly-charged tense situation.

When one of the ten dies, under suspicious circumstances, then a second, possibly by accident, the remaining eight are on edge. When a third dies violently, and they discover that the ten carved soldier figures in the dining room are disappearing one-at-a-time, they realize they’ve all been brought to a death trap — and the killer may very well be one of themselves.

The production values in this are marvelous, including set decoration, costuming, etc. The sense of claustrophobia is well done. The performances are all fine, though a few seem “over the top”. Most of the major plot points remain in place, but extremely liberties have been taken with the plot of the novel, which I found very frustrating. The reasons for the guilt of a few of the trapped individuals have been radically altered. And the methods by which some of the island’s victims meet their ends are also dramatically different from the novel. Additionally, some unneeded changes were made to some of the characters and their relationships. All of which were totally unnecessary when dealing with one of the most famous works of fiction in the English language.

So…my review score is lower than I anticipated. I give the novel “10” but this mini-series only gets a “7”. The quality of the production is, sadly, offset by the changes made to the source material. It’s still worth watching for Christie fans and others, but it’s not a very loyal translation of her work to the screen. On the other hand, if you’ve never read the novel, you may love this sumptuous production. (But read the novel!)

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try And Then There Were None (also known as “Ten Little Indians”).]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official And Then There Were None page on the BBC web site ]

See Scott’s review of the novel And Then There Were None in the October 2019 Staff Recommendations

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!