Teresa Reviews “Towards Zero” (2007)

Fidelity to text: 3 blunt instruments.
This film is yet another non-Miss Marple property that ITV Productions reconfigured. Miss Marple replaces Inspector Battle. The other major change was removing Angus MacWhirter. Most of his role was rewritten to suit Miss Marple. What didn’t was handed over to Neville Strange (weird, wrong, and creepy) and Thomas Royde. That is, Thomas marries Audrey Strange and poor Mary Aldin is left alone. Otherwise, it’s surprisingly close, right down to dialog lifted from the novel.

Quality as a movie on its own: 4 blunt instruments.
I was pleasantly surprised but after sitting through the atrocious hack-job that was Innocent Lies, anything ITV Productions did to this novel would be acceptable. Luckily for us all, ITV did Agatha proud with this adaptation. Miss Marple fit into Towards Zero surprisingly well, despite some quibbles.

ITV Productions always delivers on the eye-candy and Towards Zero is no exception. The action takes place at a stately mansion overlooking a cove on the Devon coast. This area is nicknamed the English Riviera and Zero takes full advantage of the scenic beauty and stunning ocean views. It’s gorgeous. The location was properly chosen because the cove looks to be swimmable, a key plot point. I could conceive of the murderer swimming across this cove at night whereas there are other English coves where that would be impossible. Too wide, too rough, too cold, so the swimmer dies of hypothermia, too full of sharks and jellyfish. This cove is sheltered enough that not only is it lined with resort hotels, but the ferry is both small and open.

Tourists (or locals) wouldn’t ride that little boat across rough, choppy waters in the North Sea. Too dangerous. Here? It’s just perfect.

So is the house, Gull Point. Beside getting to ogle the lavish, luxurious house, we even get to see — another key plot point — how it’s wired for servants’ bells. We see the wires connecting Lady Tressilian’s bedroom to her maid’s room. If Lady Tressilian were to ring in the middle of the night, Barrett could respond promptly since the bell would be ringing right over her head.

Since both Inspector Battle and Angus MacWhirter were done away with, Miss Marple gets many of their lines and observations. Where she doesn’t, the new Inspector Mallard does. An Inspector must be present when the most important lady in the neighborhood gets her head coshed in. His constables fill in for Inspector Battle’s constables.

Removing and reworking major characters didn’t always succeed. In the novel, Angus MacWhirter plays a crucial role. He rescues Audrey from suicide. Here, it’s her ex-husband, Neville Strange, pulling her back from the cliff and professing his undying love.

It was a creepy scene, no question, but if the scriptwriter earmarked Thomas Royde to marry Audrey, it should have been him rushing out to save her, not Neville. It would have made the ending plausible. I could not see a reason why Audrey chose Thomas for her happy ending other than because the script made her do it.

In the novel, Angus MacWhirter figures out how the crime was committed. Angus MacWhirter lies to Inspector Battle about what he saw, albeit with the same explanation Miss Marple gives. Deductions are all very well, but the police must have facts to work with. Angus MacWhirter consistently demonstrates to Audrey what a competent, caring man is like and so at the end of the novel, you can understand why she runs off to Chile with him. She doesn’t run off to Malaya with Thomas Royde who’s a cipher.

In the novel, Inspector Battle recognizes Audrey as an abused, gaslit woman who doesn’t actually confess to the crime but she doesn’t defend herself either. Emotionally, it makes sense. It’s a relief and an end to pressure and wherever she’ll end up, it’s away from her psycho ex-husband. Inspector Battle’s got a valid reason to believe her, since his own daughter was trapped in a similar situation. Inspector Mallard does not.

This was my major complaint about the movie. We don’t see Miss Marple talking to servants or Thomas Royde, Lady Tressilian, or Mary Aldin about the relationship between Audrey and Neville the way Inspector Battle and Angus MacWhirter do in the novel. Instead, she leaps across the cove to make her deductions and pulls part of the solution out of her knitting bag. A few more minutes of film devoted to Miss Marple gossiping with the cook would have more than repaid losing a few minutes of Devon coast scenery. We don’t even get a village parallel explaining why she recognized what Audrey was enduring!

I also wanted a resolution of why no one noticed that Neville Strange was wearing a soaking wet suit. In the novel, this is finessed with raincoats. We don’t get that here (despite the pouring rain), leading one to wonder why no one said anything. This is England! It rains in England like all the time. Every citizen is assigned an umbrella, raincoat, and galoshes at birth. Yet no one notices when Neville shows up at the hotel to play billiards reeking of dead fish and soaking wet. Ted Latimer should have and if he was too drunk to notice, the script should have said so.

Then there’s the denouement, where Miss Marple sketches Audrey with Thomas Royde. Really? He’s a poor substitute for his brother, Adrian, with whom Audrey was going to run away with, abandoning her husband to a life of sin. Thomas Royde has all the personality of a pine cupboard. It’s possible there’s treasure within, but if it’s not on the screen, that means it’s more likely that the cupboard is bare of life and humor.

These are quibbles, however. Overall, everything worked. The confrontation at the end, where Inspector Mallard and Miss Marple force a confession was masterful. It was funny too, watching Miss Marple accidentally on purpose shove Ted Latimer overboard. We get to watch the murderer break down when his scheme is revealed and that works too.

There are so many good moments.

I really enjoyed watching Kay Strange (wife #2) squabble with Audrey Strange (wife #1). This was played up considerably more than in the novel where everyone was boringly civilized. Lady Tressilian gets several scenes dissecting that scarlet-toed, husband-stealing hussy but even here, we get more complexity. Lady Tressilian also tells Neville that he married Kay and he’s got to stick with her. He made his bed and he’s got to lie in it. Kay was hot, hot, hot; a redhead in a red dress she spilled out of. You can see why poor Ted Latimer carries a torch for her.

This adaptation of Towards Zero is well worth watching, even with the rewrites. It works. It would have been better if they’d kept Angus MacWhirter, but considering ITV Production’s track record of inserting Miss Marple where she never appeared, it’s darn good.

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