Towards Zero

I guess I should consider myself singularly fortunate to be right at the Canadian border because we get a lot of Canadian and British shows that would not normally be seen in the USA. I did not even know that the BBC was running a whole new series of mysteries based on Agatha Christie's beloved Ms. Jane Marple, spinster sleuth extraordinary.

Geraldine McEwan as the latest and very good incarnation of Jane Marple gets invited for a weekend to the home of Eileen Atkins an old school chum. They've got quite a gathering of people at the Atkins homestead that weekend, including her ward Greg Wise and both his current wife and ex-wife. Now you know that's got to be a recipe for trouble.

But later on retired solicitor Tom Baker dies of a heart attack and shortly afterwards Atkins herself is bludgeoned to death. That does bring the police in. But of course the redoubtable Jane is way ahead of them.

McEwan's Marple is more Angela Lansbury and Helen Hayes matronly than Margaret Rutherford's old blunderbuss was. I remember recently seeing one of the Rutberford films and good old Margaret withheld clues deliberately from Scotland Yard. She wanted the fun of solving the case. But in this one, McEwan just shrewdly deduces from the behavior all around her and comes up with the answers.

It was nice to see Tom Baker whom I so well remember as the Doctor number four of the Doctors Who. I see this has also been the his last appearance to date in front of the camera.

Christie purists say that the plot was altered. Whether it was or not I can't speak to that, but Towards Zero is an intelligent drama and those who don't like pure Agatha can take to this one.

Quite a few episodes of the Miss Marple series starring Geraldine McEwan were not originally Miss Marple tales but involved different characters in other Agatha Christie stories. "Towards Zero" is one of thes stories, as it originally featured Superintendant Battle...though here he is a secondary character assisting Miss Marple.

The story is set at a most unusual weekend in the country. I say unusual because Nevile Strange and his wife are there...as is Nevile's first wife! He made sure she was invited and Nevile seems to show more attention to his ex- than his current wife...which irritates the current one to no end.

The first death appears to be a natural one, as the elderly Mr. Treves (Tom Baker) has a bad heart and dies when he's climbing some stairs when the lift appears to be out of order. But the next death...well...it's a bludgeoning and it's darn hard for this to be an accident. What follows is a weird tale where the Inspector and Miss Marple try to determine what really happened.

This is a very enjoyable story...lacking cliches and with an interesting plot. While it wasn't a Marple tale, the writer did a good job adapting the story for her.

Miss Marple is visiting an old school friend, Lady Camilla Tressilian, at her estate in Devon. Also at the estate is tennis star Neville Strange, his current wife Kay, his ex-wife Audrey and an assortment of their friends and hangers-on. Shortly after her arrival one of the older guests dies of a heart attack after having to take the stairs instead of the life. Shortly after that Lady Tressilian is murdered, bludgeoned to death in her bed. The police are soon on the case and reluctantly accept Miss Marple's assistance.

Reasonably good mystery. Some nice red herrings and twists. Does seem like twists for twists sake, to some extent, at the end though.

Not overly engaging though. Miss Marple herself is never interesting, something the writers and directors of the series know. To get around this they make the central focus, or the first person perspective, someone other than Miss Marple. In this case it is Superintendent Mallard is probably the closest to a lead character in the episode, but, well, he's just a cop so there are no interesting sub-plots involving him.

Cast includes Julian Sands and Saffron Burrows.

As usual, the story of Towards Zero was immaculate but this particular Marple story was especially nostalgic for me because, after just a few minutes, I recognised South Sands near Salcombe in South Devonshire where I lived during my teenage years in the mid 1950s. As a youngster, I worked at the Tides Reach Hotel (which looked quite unchanged) helping with the rental of a fleet of catamaran floats to the holidaymakers on the beach. One thing that was changed in the movie was that Salcombe Estuary was referred to as a river when, in actual fact, it is a tidal estuary. Only once did I ever swim across the estuary and back whilst I lived there as it wasn't an easy swim by any stretch of the imagination. Another thing that wasn't in the movie was my little sailing boat (a Salcombe Yawl - Y24) moored in the bay of South Sands. But then the movie was set about 10 years before it was there anyway! I haven't been anywhere near there for well over 50 years!

Definitely worth a glance. I saw this on our local NPR station last night (July 15) and in this summer of Desperate Housewives reruns, thought "Mystery" is usually a viable alternative. And it was. A shock to see "old" Tom Baker. Has it really been three decades since he rode through time in his telephone booth? I liked the new Miss Marple ... at least she was new to me. Perhaps not as lovable as the cinematic Marple of 4 decades ago (was that Margaret Rutherford?), but okay. I'd gladly catch another episode of the series with her. It was also a treat to see the drop-dead handsome Greg Wise and present-day Julian Sands. The clues to solve the mystery are presented fairly and it is a good mystery, worthy of Christie. Check it out if you like brain teasers.