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There has been a murder – and I’m not just talking about the plot “Agatha Christie”Seven requests. In fact, I’m talking about the Netflix version itself. The notorious crime author has sold between 2 and 4 billion copies of her work, but in a way, the TV version of The Seven Faces Puzzle It feels absolutely criminal.
I don’t want to brag, but I’m nominating myself as an expert here. In the 2000s, British television channel ITV had a monopoly on the Poirot and Miss Marple novels, and I grew up watching them. Add movie classics like the Peter Ustinov movie Death on the Nile I’ve been reading her books since I was 14, and I’m one application away from joining the Agatha Christie fan club.
The Seven Dials Mystery is Agatha Christie’s goofy story adapted for Netflix
I’ll confidently bet £10 (or $10 USD/AU$10 to my American and Aussie friends) that you’ve never heard of The Seven Faces Puzzle before. Not only was he not as great a hitter And then there was no one or Murder on the Orient ExpressBut the novel takes characters from it, The secret of chimneyswas a much greater success. The Seven Faces Puzzle It was released to mostly poor reviews from critics, and all three of these points together aren’t the best grounds for an adaptation.
Is the original book really one of Christie’s best books? i don’t think so. Sure it has a lighter tone, but that only comes out if you’re actually from the 1920s. The overall mystery doesn’t really stick, and it’s a bit too complicated for its own good.
None of these things “The Seven Faces of Agatha Christie” Wrong, the most we have to deal with. There were a million better stories for the world’s largest streaming service to choose for its original content, especially if it wanted to create a visual catalog of Christie’s work.
Sparkling cyanide, Crooked House or Cards on the table Maybe they made smart choices, especially since their narrative structures are all healthier. But here we start to encounter our other problem.
If you’ve watched any of the more recent Agatha Christie TV adaptations over the past decade – which were either BBC or direct-to-Britbox – you’ll notice a subtle downward spiral in quality. From Kim Cattrall Witness for the prosecution To Anjelica Huston Towards zeroit seems that there is no new series that anyone watches.
So, are the glory days of adapting Agatha Christie to the small screen over? It certainly seems that way for standalone novels. I think a streaming service like Netflix could score some points with a Miss Marple reboot, but even that is a big ask.
The changes that Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials made to the original book don’t work either
Warning: Spoilers for Agatha Christie’s Seven Faces ahead.
when Murder, she wrote and Colombo Viewers used to airing it in the 1980s quickly discovered that the biggest star of an episode was also the killer – so much so that the creators then had to change their casting methods. Obviously we don’t learn anything from history, like the biggest stars in the world Agatha Christie’s Seven Faces They are the ones who give up the game.
Without revealing the final crime (although you can just read the book if you want an answer), Lord Caterham is changed to Lady Caterham in this adaptation, and that’s a big problem. Frankly, the cast execs could and should do anything to include Helena Bonham Carter in their production, and she’s as dazzling and delightful as you’d expect in the limited run she has.
However, it also reveals the secrets of the Seven Discs in a way that would not have happened if Our Lady had still been a Lady. It’s an incredibly ridiculous blunder that hammers the central nails of storytelling into the ground, and I can’t believe the decision came from the same man who made Broadchurch.
If you want to keep some mystery until the end, I’d advise you to skip episode two altogether. You can solve all the communications and logistics in the game halfway through – something the Queen of Crime would never have allowed to happen in her reign, even if it was one of her weaker stories.
So, what do I really get out of this streaming experience? Feeling let down and not seeing enough of Bonham Carter. Shout out to Martin Freeman, who’s clearly having the time of his life playing a Netflix game Cluedo.
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