Review: And Then There Were None

Dear Hivers

10 outsiders on a far off island get killed individually, in various terrible ways. Happy holidays!

It’s true that a BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s best-selling thriller might not be particularly festive, but And Then There Were None was still far and away the best thing on TV this Christmas.

Considering And Then There Were None is not only Agatha Christie’s most popular book but the best-selling mystery novel in the world ever, I’m a bit surprised I’ve never read it. But I did see a stage version earlier this year, and figured I’d got all the tension out of my system during those two nail-biting hours. So when I heard it was going to be on TV this Christmas, I assumed that without the stress of worrying about what was going to happen next, I’d be able to sit back, relax and look for clues, safe and smug in the knowledge of whodunnit.

And Then There Were None

Unfortunately, there’s literally nothing relaxing about this chilling murder mystery. Even the opening credits are dark and super creepy. And once you get a look at that island, in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a forbidding, lonely mansion on it, there’s no going back. Bad things are going to happen, and just because you know they’re coming, it doesn’t make them any easier to watch – particularly because they’re all accompanied by scary music and lingering silences, during which the characters all eye each other suspiciously in the semi-darkness because of course there’s a three-day thunderstorm and everything has to be done by candlelight. Oh, and did I mention the poem, which predicts – sometimes rather cryptically – the method of each murder, and the ten figurines that disappear one by one as the characters meet their end? Nothing freaky about that…

But that doesn’t make it any less tense – sure, it’s not ‘is the killer about to jump out of that wardrobe’ scary, but somehow ‘when will we trip over the next dead body, and who will it be’ is just as bad. And while some of the characters manage only a handful of lines before being bumped off, it’s hard not to get a bit attached to some of the others, even while knowing that the whole reason they’re on the island is because they’re bad people – and if they do survive, chances are it’s because they dunnit.

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