AND THEN THERE WERE NONE BBC ADAPTATION

Tuppence

With the UK TX date for And Then There Were None just three days away, we are interested to hear what you are hoping to see in this brand new adaptation?

Griselda

You have been hearing, haven't you? We've been posting comments and suppositions for weeks. Have a scroll back. 

Read an interesting article, just now, on The Telegraph online. The author talks about Christie's determination to confront and detail instances of evil. Apparently, she saw many instances of it in her own lifetime. Talking of style, the journalist says that And Then There Were None 'is quite unlike other Christies.' ' Nowhere else does she achieve the same 'schematic distillation'. Crikey. I thought we were erudite with our 'axioms' and literary references. We've obviously got a long way to go.

Griselda

I'm going to find this adaptation chilling and scary, because the story is terrifying. I'd like to see some first rate acting. A real bonus is if a great actor for Agatha Christie can be found. I think they used the girl from The Sittaford Mystery in more than one dramatisation. The actor who played the journalist in The Sittaford Mystery is superb, and has featured in various other productions, detective mysteries such as Midsomer Murders, and also a Thomas Hardy. So good actors who can be used again in AC dramas is what I'd like.

I don't agree with taking justice into one's own hands, so I'm not going to enjoy the denouement, or find satisfaction in the outcome. 

MarcWatson-Gray

If it captures the essence of the book,the excitement,the puzzlement,the anger,the indignation,the tension,fear,and finally (for some )the resignation,then i'll be happy !!

martin223

New Agatha Christie, it's always a very special occasion, simply to say it's a feeling even when it's the adaptation of "And Then There Were None". So we can really wait for the ten strangers in ten parts ... 

Griselda

Having read some of Wikpedia on And Then There Were None, to remind me of the plot (I don't keep the novel at home - too scary) I was struck by two things. I wonder if Vera Claythorne was a type of individual Agatha Christie knew, and used as a template for the character of Mrs Redfern in her 1941 novel, Evil Under the Sun. I wonder if the central premise of Priestley's play of 1945,  'An Inspector Calls', may have been influenced by Miss Trent's (or is it Brent?) story in ATTWN. The spinster  treats a maid who has fallen pregnant callously, and in doing sets up a chain of events in the girl's life which lead to her sad and lonely death. The idea of indirect responsibility for another's suffering is Priestley's theme. SPOILER ALERT. It is interesting in ATTWN to see Christie selecting murders which are indirect, or mitigated in some way by circumstances. We are used to novels by her which deal with clear cut murder for gain, and a murderer, a weapon and a victim. In ATTWN, we see her creating a hierarchy of culpability, which she arrives at, it seems, via a process of complex moral evaluation. To decide, for instance, that Vera must die last, because she is the worst, takes delicate moral discrimination. I notice that, to the character of Lombard himself, stealing food when you will die otherwise must mitigate the seriousness of the offence. To Christie, no. What is she thinking: does she think that if you feel hunger yourself, you must know what your fellow men will feel when you take their food? Does she think a soldier must be brave and hardy, and find his own food? Does she think that the big crime he commits against humanity is to disparage members of another community as being different to himself,  ie, their sensibilities are different? The young play boy gets off lightly with an early death, and no lengthy psychological torment. Is she making allowances for him on account of his youth? Tali has often written about an evolution in the development of Christie's ideas, and about her accepting modern conventions and propositions. I am feeling now that ATTWN marks a kind of acceptance on her part of moral relativism, and the fact that experiences contribute to a person's moral code. I would always previously said - based on comments by characters in Mrs McGinty's Dead - that she was a nature over nurture person. I see now that she like to think deeply about what makes up human goodness and worth - and she does make her own allowances.

taliavishay-arbel

I admit I only read ATTWN once, and didn't want to read it again - I don't like scary, predetermined bad endings. But I do think that the premise of the book - people who caused other people's death but weren't or couldn't be punished by the law, allowed Agatha Christie a lot more freedom in defining responsibility for another person's life and death. In the same way SPOILER!!!! in Curtain, the villain isn't a murderer by law - he never laid hands on anybody - though he is responsible for multiple deaths, and he is brought to justice outside the framework of the law. It is easier for us to accept "taking the law into one's hands" in "Curtain", because the justification for it is not justice or revenge but rather protecting the villain's future victims, but in both cases, moving outside the law allows for more subtleties in defining crime. 

Griselda

I wonder why Agatha Christie found this her hardest novel to write. It seems easy on the face of it. No changes of scene,  as in Three Act Tragedy, nor time lapse going back to a a murder which is cold case, as in Five Little Pigs. ( The back stories in ATTWN are old, but the murders which hook and engage the action happen in natural enough sequence.) Not too many red herrings. Sittaford Mystery must have been hard to write with that unbelievable plot around Violet and her mother. A Murder is Announced must have been hard with the complicated Goedler family history - which, because we barely meet these characters - is so hard to make  interesting. The ABC Murders the hardest, I'd have thought, with the SPOILER 'dual' murderer - assumed and real. I think it was deciding on whose crime was most callous, and who should be spun out to the end, that made writing ATTWN hard.

Christopher_Wren

I think And then there were none was hard to write, because Christie gave us insight into the characters thoughts without revealing the murderer. That's incredibily difficult.

Griselda

I suppose Cards on the Table has a similar idea: people with a guilty secret.

Tommy_A_Jones

It must be me, I don't find the Book scary and it doesn't give me a disturbing feeling unlike The Crooked House and to some extent Ordeal By Innocense and Taken At The Flood perhaps I am desensitized by it. I don't think all the Crimes were In-direct, wasn't The Rodgers Crime Direct?

martin223

BBC made a great adaptation of 'And Than There Were None'.

Griselda

Yes, some were direct.

RolandoCastillo

According to the Epilogue, Inspector Maine says the doctor who tended Jennifer Brady (the woman who the Rogerses are accused of murdering) states that Mr. and Mrs. Rogers "Certainly didn't poison her, or anything like that, but his [the doctor's] personal belief was that there was some funny business - that she died as the result of neglect on their part. Says it's the sort of thing that is quite impossible to prove." To support this, the note found at story's end has Mrs. Brady's doctor convinced that her death was caused by a withholding of a 'restorative drug' -- again, something that cannot be easily proven.

tudes

Christopher_Wren said:

I think And then there were none was hard to write, because Christie gave us insight into the characters thoughts without revealing the murderer. That's incredibily difficult.

I agree.I've never suspected who the murderer was. And, yet, you know a lot of things about the characters, theirs feelings and thoughts.
And don't think the book is scary either. I think it shows the dark side of human nature and how people- apparently very respectful- can be cruel (even when they think that they are doing is the right thing).

silvana

I watched the new adaptation of ATTWN on BBC. It was a fantastic adaptation with a great cast! My daughter of 14,  who never had read a AC story, just loved it! Now she wants to start reading Agatha Christie! :-)

Agathasmykid

Hi, any news on when/if it will be shown in North America?

Luke

Lombard question
I have not read the book but i have seen the stage play 
SPOILERS POSSIBLE 
I went to see the play and at the end it was revealed that Lombard didn't kill anyone just that he wanted people to believe that he had. In the BBC adaptation there wasn't any mention of this? Was there liberties taken by the stage play or had the BBC adaptation got it wrong. Can anyone put the record straight 

Anubis

No errors by anyone: The plot of the BBC adaptation is taken directly from the book as written. When AC came to write a play based on her own novel, she deliberately "lightened it up", with a different ending. The 1944 movie is even more different than the play.

suzannej007

For anyone in South Yorkshire in coming weeks, I just thought I'd mention that I'm currently directing a production of the stage play to be performed at The University Drama Studio in Sheffield from 10th - 13th January.  It's a great chance to compare the two texts that Christie produced for this one story.  I can pass on more details if anyone's interested.

taliavishay-arbel

All the best with your production!

pooja

I have watched the movie and then there were none...in my country also it was made in Hindi with the title "GUMNAAM"........it is awsome

Sandi

I can't wait.  One of my favorites in the 1945 black and white.  

CA_Christie_Fan

And Then There Were None (black and white version) was the first Agatha Christie movie I had ever seen--afterwhich, I raced through her novels and short story collections, never being disappointed in her plots. She always entertained me right to the last page!

Sourav

One of the most enthralling novel, though it is sure has some resemblance with  Priestley's 'An Inspector Calls' but that is a very distant one. The core of the novel is lying in the deep rooted parapsychology of a man who's psyche is abide by law. Apart from series of superbly executed murders, which user have to go through helplessly without getting faintest hint, like those ten chosen, who is behind it, also just could not understand the motif of these ruthless execution.

Only reader got the chance to know reaching last page, holding breadth all along, to find out a excellent revelation of a wicked psychology. To me, it is the novel of atmosphere and psychology in crud from not only for murder but also for the victims. They bound to face the horrendous past of theirs before facing death.