Towards Zero (BBC iPlayer, released March 2025). A very belated "Christmas gift" from the BBC; for the Brits, it's now quite traditional to "receive" a usual holiday Agatha Christie murder mystery as a reward for dutifully paying the yearly TV licence fee. The title and the narrator suggest that a murder is not the end-point that happens out of the blue, but rather, trying to understand the genesis or when the idea was first thought of, is the more vital thing. Everything else that comes after, are actions taken one after another as it hurtles towards point zero of the murder itself.
A handsome production set in the prewar years, with impeccable sets, location & costumes, and a beguilingly handsome lead (very nice eye-candy). One clever device used was the colour palette, with the mansion where the murder takes place which is surrounded by the sea, is depicted as implacably grim and grey, as if the pall of death hung over it by day and night. By contrast, it was entirely gay (in the old sense of the word) and almost technicolor in the cheerful world of the nearby hotel where the guests escape to for desperate relief from the tension and angst at the mansion where they are all somewhat unwillingly thrown together.
As usual, the protagonist is an ageing matriarch, surrounded by greedy, grasping offspring, all of whom cannot wait to inherit their portion of what has been promised or hoped for in the estate. But who will be bumped off first, and who will be left standing at the end? This three-part series while perhaps not the best production from the BBC in this fashion - my favourite being "Witness for the Prosecution" - is still a satisfying three-parter that will keep one quite engrossed right till the very end.