Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026)

(c)2026 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 2½ poison bottles

Changes large and small, which destroy Agatha’s intention and twist ending

Quality of movie: 3 poison bottles

It looks great! But the pace flagged and the plot didn’t hold together well.

I’m indebted to Val McDermid, aka the Quine of Crime, for pointing out what should be obvious. Ms. McDermid is a prolific and successful mystery writer in her own right. Being very well-read and a longtime Agatha Christie fan, she recognized what Agatha was up to in The Seven Dials Mystery. People forget Agatha had a sense of humor. She read widely. After the trauma of her mother’s death, the slow public death of her marriage, the eleven-day disappearance, her divorce, and her subsequent crawl back to normality, she wanted to write something fun and frothy, yet still twisty.

So, with Seven Dials, Agatha wrote a thriller with murder, top-secret formulas, secret societies, a master criminal, foolish aristocrats, and our hero, Jimmy Thesiger, who could have just left the Drones Club. Yes, Jimmy, an amiable dumbass, could be renamed Bertie Wooster. He’s introduced in the first paragraph in the first chapter and as you get to know Jimmy, you take his measure quickly: a harmless lightweight.

Our heroine, Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, arrives in chapter four. Gerry Wade — a man she’d never met before — died in her bed at Chimneys (it was being rented out) and she’s miffed. She’s also bored. Her father, Lord Caterham is no help. One thing leads to another and eventually, what she finds leads to Jimmy (who she does not know) who agrees to help her solve the case. Deeper and deeper go Jimmy and Bundle, discovering secret societies, another murder, intrigue because of that stolen formula, twists and turns, and eventually Bundle learns that she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. She also learns who really loves her.

That part — that Bundle isn’t as smart as she thinks she is — remains.

Everything else changes, from tiny changes (Gerry Wade is her prospective fiancé) to larger ones (Lord Caterham’s dead but Lady Caterham isn’t) to massive ones (Jimmy Thesiger shifts from the main, male lead to just some handy guy) and Bundle doesn’t get her happy ever after with her true love who’s always loved her from afar. Oh, and Superintendent Battle turns into an idiot.

Turning Battle, a very intelligent man hiding behind the mask of Officer Plodd, idiotic is in keeping with so much of the plot. Everyone behaved stupidly and not because they’re extras from a Wodehouse novel. It starts at the very beginning in 1920. A well-dressed man wanders aimlessly around the deserted town of Ronda and into the empty bullring which turns out to not be empty. That man — we learn later that he’s Lord Caterham — clearly didn’t pay attention in spy school. He’s trying to rendezvous with Dr. Matip, yet is oblivious to his surroundings. That town and that bullring could have been loaded with hidden snipers. Does he hear ominous noises just behind the bull barricades? He does and does nothing but stand around, looking blank.

Eventually, he gets moving when the bull arrives and gores him.

The scene shifts to a masquerade party in 1925 at Chimneys. The party’s being hosted by Lord and Lady Coote. They’re not real aristocrats dating back to William the Conqueror. Lord Coote earned his title with his steel business. Lady Caterham, blueblood back to the Norman Conquest, rents him Chimneys because she’s broke. Although, looking at that magnificent pile loaded with valuable art made me wonder why she’s pinching pennies when could sell those priceless heirlooms to keep the roof in good repair. Even more, watching Lady Caterham and Bundle wander through acres and acres of formal flowerbeds, immaculate clipped boxwood parterres, yew hedges, and what looks like a star allée, centered on a cenotaph honoring Lord Caterham and his son and heir, Thomas, I wondered even more why Lady Caterham cries poverty when she can afford an army of gardeners.

Sigh. Moving on. Gerry Wade is discovered dead in the morning, surrounded by alarm clocks. Seven of them have been rearranged on the mantlepiece. Bundle later finds number eight tossed out onto the acres of freshly mown lawn surrounding Chimneys. At the inquest (death by misadventure), she notices a suspicious man following her and Ronny Devereux. A nice bit of detecting connects the suspicious man with Scotland Yard.

In episode two, back in 1920, we watch a lady assassin shoot Dr. Matip’s sister in the deserted town of Ronda. In a remarkable bit of stupidity, the lady assassin doesn’t kneecap Dr. Matip to get the formula and the sample. She, also having not learned anything in spy school, bends down to pick up the formula envelope, letting Dr. Matip shoot her. Meanwhile, in 1925, Bundle implausibly finds Superintendent Battle’s office inside the maze of Scotland Yard despite not even knowing his name. He can’t dissuade her from amateur detecting. Next step is coaxing Bill Eversleigh to take her to the Seven Dials nightclub. From there, it’s a short step to learning that Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs George Lomax, is hosting a big conference at his palatial estate where Dr. Matip will prove his formula works to Lord Coote, the steel magnate. Bundle and Jerry wangle invitations.

The party is hunting pheasants with shotguns. This is important because these people demonstrate they know something about gun handling. Thus, we endure one of the stupidest scenes in the entire three-hour ordeal. Dr. Matip is asked to prove how tough his steel is. He hangs his pocket watch (made of the magic steel) from a stand in Lomax’s palatial, stuffed with antiques, living room. Then, Lord Coote shoots at the pocket watch with a shotgun in front of the crowd! A shotgun! Inside a house! Shotgun shells are big and loaded with hundreds of small metal balls. The reason is that it’s hard to aim at fastmoving, small game birds. A spray of pellets means you hit that pheasant with something, bringing it down. The only time you fire a shotgun inside a house is when you’re facing a home invader. The pellet spray goes everywhere.
That night, intruders break into the palatial mansion despite the police cordon. Jimmy fights, loses his fight, and gets shot.

Episode three goes completely off the rails. Loraine shows up, gets locked up, manages to overpower a big, burly constable, steal the formula and the magic watch, and escape on the train. Bundle, Jimmy, and Bill follow. They indulge in a Mexican standoff, waving guns around. Despite finally understanding that Jimmy’s the bad guy, Bundle doesn’t kneecap him. Then she learns the identity of the real bad guy who somehow arranged the entire steal the formula to make piles of money plot.

It’s mom, of course. If you used to watch Murder, She Wrote, you won’t be surprised. Helena Bonham Carter is the biggest name in the cast so she, naturally, must be the villain even though it makes no sense.

If you’ve never read Seven Dials, you may not care how the plot’s been completely rewritten. But rewriting Jimmy Thesiger from the male lead to just another doofus removes the shock of the original ending.