“The Seven Dials of Agatha Christie” Season 1 Episode 1 Recap

After the amazing loss was classified as a death due to misfortune, Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent was the only one who refused to accept the idea. Photo: Simon Ridgway/Netflix/B) 2024 Netflix, Inc.

Fans of twisty murder mysteries set in stately English mansions, and the cunning and brave heroines who solve them, rejoice! A new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Seven Dials is here to stimulate your brain’s problem-solving pleasure center. Is Netflix capitalizing on the success of its multi-movie ‘Knives Out’ partnership with Rian Johnson? Is it trying to take on PBS a little bit by branching out into the adaptation game of the golden age of detective fiction? Does the series’ tagline, “The Queen of Crime is Back,” portend even more cozy murder solving on our screens in the years to come? Whatever the reason, we all benefit.

“Bundle of Love” focuses almost entirely on exposition, introducing the characters with their emotional, social, and historical context, as well as setting up the scene and stakes of the murders to be solved. Lady Eileen Brent (but please call her “Bundle”) is one of the bright young people in society, and she looks completely at home in an exquisitely draped golden dress during a large party being held at her parents’ home. Up to this point, it was quite normal for the daughter of a marquess (the late Lord Caterham).

Will this be markedly different to Gosford Park? I agree. Series creator and screenwriter Chris Chibnall (Broadchurch, Doctor Who) made a smart choice to emphasize the emotional hangover, so many families were having a hard time in 1925. Bundle’s younger brother, Tommy, was killed in action in 1915, according to a memorial to which Mrs Caterham still regularly leaves flowers, and the war ended just seven years ago. Bundle and his mother remain deeply affected by the loss of Tommy and Lord Caterham, who died in 1920. Although they put on a brave face, Mrs. Caterham rarely ventures out of their property, the Chimneys.

Sadly, Mrs. Caterham is now rich in land but poor in cash, and is forced to rent out her home for the summer to a wealthy steel magnate and his wife in order to pay their employees and maintain Chimneys’ physical factory. Lord Oswald and Mrs. Coote and their new use of money are terrifying to Mrs. Caterham. Can you believe they thanked butler Treadwell for bringing them glasses of fresh champagne? What next? — but money is money, and she needs it.

As a viewer, it’s great fun to be transported so skillfully and efficiently into such a fictional world. The inevitable discomfort is fleeting and only appears a few times. For example, George Lomax, Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, tells his subordinate Jerry Wade, right in front of Bundle, that he must step away from their sweet, flirtatious conversations to look after Mrs. Coote so that Lomax can continue his efforts to become Lord Oswald’s best friend. As described, it’s not elegant, but Alex McQueen’s overly precise, irreverent delivery more than makes up for it, conveying Lomax’s exact type in just a few lines.

Jerry dutifully chases the beetle out, and there is a little scene at the party where Jerry plays bridge with Lady Coote, Jimmy Thesiger, and Rupert Bateman, the Coote family’s personal secretary. I had no special feelings toward Mrs. Coote until the moment when I threatened to use violence against her because of his very gentle suggestion that she should keep an eye on her cards. She is now my lifelong imaginary enemy. Luckily, Jimmy defuses the tension with some self-deprecating humor about failing the civil service exam. However, thanks to his perfect dancing, he always turns out to be a sought after party guest.

After an ecstatic dance with Jerry, Bundle goes to bed that night with dreams of a potential marriage proposal spinning around in his head. What a great party it was! What sadness would crush her hopes in the morning. As I watched Bundle and Jerry prance around the dance floor as a jazz band played feverishly, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the gulf between the perspective of the characters experiencing the party and the perspective of the modern viewer watching it unfold. Bundle and Jerry think they are having a great night, but they do not realize how close they are to the end of an era, as they are blissfully ignorant that World War I has passed and the Great Depression and World War II are yet to come.

Treadwell and Bundle found Jerry dead in bed with an empty bottle of powerful sleep draft on his bedside table. Bundle is the only person who refuses to accept the idea that Jerry died from some kind of overdose. He was a legendary sleeper—Tommy’s letters from the front said he was able to sleep through the bomb explosions, and his Foreign Office colleagues Ronnie Devereux and Bill Eversley planted eight alarm clocks in his room as a prank to wake him up before noon—and arranged a special dinner date with Bundle to ask him some unspecified, life-changing questions.

Because there was no evidence that anyone else was involved in Jerry’s death, an autopsy classified Jerry’s death as an accidental death, but Bundle is not convinced. In addition to Jerry’s death crushing her romantic hopes and reviving her worst grief for Tommy, her sense of comfort and duty to the man who dragged her dead brother from the battlefield prevents her from lying. Ms Bundle is also furious that Mrs Coote refused to mention at the inquest that the sleeping draft came from a bottle given to her sleepless maid Emily. How did we get from Emily’s room to Jerry’s? Lady Coote snorts at Bundle and says, “It won’t do us any good to go through this tragic event again,” and folks, that’s what we call a toxic “keep calm and carry on.”

Ronnie, feeling a little guilty about remaining silent about the strange discrepancy between the eight clocks he and Bill had hidden throughout Jerry’s room and the seven cleverly placed on the mantelpiece, reluctantly agrees to ask a few questions about the Seven Dials. Jerry mentions it in a draft of a letter to his sister Lorraine, but why does he regret divulging anything about London’s notoriously seedy areas? Does it have something to do with the seven clocks in his room? Or maybe about the secret project Sir Oswald and George Lomax were talking about in public? Is it code for something else entirely?

While we were asking questions, Bundle wanted to know what happened to the man he found at the inquest, and what happened to the man he found again in the town square while talking to Ronnie. who is he? The man clearly noticed her, and realizing that she noticed him, began to walk away at a brisk pace. Bundle runs off after him, although he suspects he is part Bloodhound. He escapes, but thanks to some quick thinking at a phone booth, Bundle learns that the mysterious man has called Scotland Yard. You’ll know right away from the credits that this is a police superintendent battle, but for Bundle, he’s going to have to remain a fascinating mystery for a little longer.

Bundle then senses Oates and announces that he intends to drive to London to meet Ronnie and investigate a little more. Mrs. Caterham can only sigh that her only surviving child looks so much like her late, brave husband, who we now know is actually the same man we saw go to death by a bull in Ronda, Spain, in 1920. (Do his family know the gory details of Lord Caterham’s death?) The plot thickens when Bundle, on a hellish drive down a country road, comes across a figure lying in the middle of the road. road. Poor Ronnie is shot and bleeding, and with his last breath he urges Bundle to “tell Jimmy Thesiger…tell Seven Dials.”

Now we have two murders, so it’s time to make some informed guesses. Sir Oswald and Mrs. Coote are excluded from consideration because they are written as too graphic to be confused with Jerry’s death. In addition to Sir Oswald’s gratitude for his staff, Lady Coote is openly mean to the maid assigned to her, and they openly talk about money. Perhaps worst of all, they were forced to tell Lady Caterham that they had paid a scholarship to cover the tuition fees of Mr. Bateman, a brilliant secretary, at the same exclusive boarding school that Tommy attended. None of these acts are crimes, but to those born into the mansion, they may as well be crimes. Coot basically walks around with a giant neon sign above his head that flashes “RED HERRING.” I know who I think killed Jerry, but Ronnie’s death complicates my theory, so I won’t say any more about my suspicions until the final episode. Do you still have any particular suspects in mind, dear reader?

• Mia McKenna-Bruce and Helena Bonham Carter as Bundle and Lady Caterham are very well cast. The two look so much alike that you could believe they were mother and daughter, and McKenna-Bruce’s performance is a cousin of Bonham Carter’s, who had a huge hit as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View.

• Treadwell is played by legendary British “hey, that’s the guy” Guy Sinner. He’s appeared in bits and pieces of everything over the decades, but I remember him best for his role as Lieutenant Gruber in the long-running series “Aro, Aro!,” about a group of French Resistance fighters of varying zeal who outwit the Nazis in Vichy France. It’s clearly a comedy.

• Speaking of Treadwell, he’s a solid fielder and he delivers my favorite line of the episode. Regarding the clock on Jerry’s mantelpiece, he frankly tells Bundle, “What a gentleman does with as many clocks as he wants in his room is his own business!” And you know what? He’s right. This casual disregard for the privacy of our watches has gone too far.

• The morning after a big party, Treadwell wisely anticipates the needs of hungover teenagers by setting out trays of dry toast and liver salt. This is a new and old-school product for me, much like the Alka-Seltzer forerunner.

• To defend this section against baseless accusations that it’s nothing more than a Treadwell fanzine, I’d like to note that this episode is the third time I see Nabaan Rizwan, who plays Ronnie, play a character who dies unexpectedly.

• Finally, if you’re wondering what exactly a Marquis is, check out Debrett’s. Excluding the Royal Family and all their Royal Highnesses, the ranks of the nobility are dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons. In other words, it’s pretty nifty. Lord Caterham would have outranked fellow fictional nobles Anthony, Viscount Bridgerton, and Robert, Earl of Grantham.