Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Ella Lily Hyland, Matthew Rhys, Mimi Keene, Clarke Peters, Jack Farthing, Anjana Vasan, Adam Hugill, Khalil Ben Gharbia, Jackie Clune, Grace Doherty, Anjelica Huston, Ravi Multani, Jack Staddon, Alexander Cobb, James Brooker, Lyle Wren, Michael Culkin, Honor Davis-Pye, Samuel W. Hodgson, Tristan Beint, Peter Forbes, Alexander Squires.
Murder, at its most inventive, sells for television and cinema almost unlike any other genre; it is the basic desire to see the restitution of justice, the chance for the armchair detective to sharpen their wits against the author of the piece, and to satisfy a need to see if they could indeed also get away with the most horrendous of acts one human can commit on another.
One of the least celebrated novels on screen from Agatha Christie’s extensive career, Towards Zero, attempts with great heart to confound the reader with several misdirection’s in terms of just how awful, for their time, the cast of characters are.
The adaptation of the book for television, written by Rachel Bennette, does justice to the period, and even gives a deeper idea of the life of a psychopath as they offer their charm to the world but hide their more frightening aspects within, only allowing them to surface in the face of extreme prejudice. The three-part series also offers glimpses into the upsetting nature of loneliness and the degrees of pain suffered by those with undiagnosed PTSD, and in the inserted character of Inspector Leach, the personality and fiercely dramatic endowed image of Matthew Rhys comes to the fore as he gives yet another reason on screen in which surely in time he will go down as one of the great Welsh actors.
The suffering captured of Leach’s life as he calls upon on all his ingenuity and patience, despite being at the lowest of ebbs, in his efforts to reveal the murderer, is quite frankly a superb view of how detective dramas should be considered as a large, uncovered window into society’s own soul. It is with terrific earnestness that Matthew Rhys has managed to carve out a sizeable career in his resolve to each character he has portrayed, that Inspector Leach is another tick on his resume.
Along with Anjelica Huston, Mimi Keane, Clarke Peters, and Anjana Vasan adding decency and spectacle to the storyline, the three-part drama carries itself with a certain style of performance; it doesn’t match the highs of those which gave rise to the pleasure of a Hercule Poirot or Ms. Marple, but it does offer insight into the lesser-known works of Britain’s Queen of Crime.
A decent ‘whodunnit’, a fair crack at one of the lesser intriguing novels from Agatha Christie, one given the time it requires to build up to a decently expanded thrilling reveal.
Ian D. Hall