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!)
Recommended
by
Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library
Have you watched this one?
What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the
Staff
Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that
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