Teresa Reviews “Zero Hour” (2019)

Teresa reviews “Zero Hour” the 2019 French TV adaption of Toward Zero and found very little Agatha Christie and a lot of Lucille Ball

From Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie, Season Two.
Episode: L’Heure Zéro

Teresa Peschel 2022
Source: Amazon DVD box set

Fidelity to text: ½ poison bottles and knives

Boil down the plot to “A man frames his hated ex-wife for murder,” add a bloody glove, and you’ve got all the fidelity you’re going to get.

Quality of film on its own: 2 ½ poison bottles and knives

It depends on how you feel about an I Love Lucy sex farce mashed up with comic policemen and multiple murder.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

Towards Zero is one of Agatha’s best novels. It focuses on what Superintendent Battle calls “The Zero Hour.” The murder is actually the end of the story, not the beginning. It’s the culmination of a long chain of events that lead to one point: someone’s death.

In the novel, the true murder is that of Audrey Strange. Her ex-husband, Neville, wants her dead but he wants her to suffer. So he murders someone else (Lady Tressilian) and frames Audrey. That way, he can watch her twist in the wind as the Crown prosecutes and hangs her.

Along the way, Neville also murders Audrey’s fiancé (a car accident, and it can’t be proved) because if he can’t have her, then nobody can, and Treves, a lawyer, who can identify Neville as having murdered a friend with a bow and arrow when they were both kids. It was an accident, mum! I swear it! Treves dies of a forced heart attack (Neville hangs a warning sign claiming the lift is out of order) and he has to climb the stairs. Again, unprovable.

Neville hates Audrey because she was so afraid of him, she left. Although the novel doesn’t spell it out, he probably hit her as well as terrorized and gaslit her. To save face, he claimed he left her for the hotter, younger Kay. Audrey didn’t argue, preferring safety to the truth.

There’s a lot more, including unrequited love and a suicide survivor who returns to the scene just in time to save Audrey.

The novel’s been filmed four times: a truly dreadful French version that the Agatha Christie estate disavowed (Innocent Lies, 1995). A version with Miss Marple (!) in place of Superintendent Battle that otherwise follows the text reasonably close for ITV Productions (Towards Zero, 2007). There’s another French version (L’Heure Zéro, also in 2007) that reportedly follows the text. It’s directed by Pascal Thomas who did the French Tommy and Tuppence films. It’s not available with English subtitles so I can’t see it for you.

And there’s this version. It doesn’t follow the text at all but it, unlike Innocent Lies, eschews an incest subplot and flirtations with the Nazis. There’s plenty of sex, but it mostly takes place offscreen. It’s alluded to constantly as the characters seem to do nothing but discuss their sex lives and the ramifications thereof but it’s all in the name of le sport. You won’t feel the need to take a shower afterwards.

I have no idea why a French television studio bought the rights to Agatha Christie stories and then didn’t film them; instead rewriting them so completely that they bear little resemblance to the original properties.

Anyway.

I’m still unsure about what I watched.

It was amusing and silly when it wasn’t infuriating. I’ve never seen such bad policework. It’s supposed to be comic policemen but even so, that doesn’t explain why they’re so bad at their job. There are bodies. Shouldn’t we at least see Commissaire Laurence interview suspects? Look for clues? He interviews Audrey, the main suspect, by trying to seduce her. And succeeds! And then he pouts when Audrey sends him 24 red roses to say once was enough. It’s acceptable for him to dump his one-night-stands with roses but not for the lady to turn the tables.

Why didn’t he interview the son of Roger Foucher when they found Roger’s body? When someone dies under unusual circumstances (drowning while fishing), the family has to be contacted and if they’re suspicious, they’ll say something! Yet Roger’s son has to come to the police station on his own — when the plot demanded it — to say dad was murdered.

Why was the TV station producer poisoned with strychnine and then knifed? Wasn’t the strychnine enough? I guess the knife was there to implicate Chef Maxime and then he’d be found innocent despite only his fingerprints being on the murder weapon. Because it was the strychnine that did the job? And he has an alibi of being dead drunk in his restaurant kitchen at the time?

Why would police secretary Marlène, presumably a professional who knows how things are done, especially if you want a successful trial to follow, fake a medical report? Marlène is convinced that Chef Maxime is guilty of murder because he jilted her at the altar years ago, so she seduces the police surgeon until she can drug him with valium, steals the lab report, and alters the drug from strychnine to digitalin! And because in the end, she’s proven correct, it’s all swept under the rug? She behaved stupidly and irresponsibly because the plot demanded it. He jilted her at least fifteen years ago, he’s a notorious womanizer, and she’s still so hung up on him that she tampers with evidence?

When Laurence proves Chef Maxime did murder four people, does Marlène congratulate herself on her lucky escape? As if.

What was really annoying was watching Alice Avril, girl journalist, act as though her brain was between her legs. She knows Chef Maxime jilted her best friend, Marlène. She knows that he was married to Audrey. She knows that he’s married to Claire. She knows he’s a womanizing cheater. So what does she do? Practically fall into his arms while claiming she’s fighting the attraction.

Um, no. It’s perfectly possible to see a hot guy and not act on the attraction! That’s what professional women do. So do professional men, for that matter. People who can’t behave like professionals in mixed settings should stay home and let the rest of us get the job done. Hollywood portrays women like this All The Time and it is maddening. That’s how little they think of women. No matter what a Hollywood producer claims, we’re bimbos with round heels.

I noticed the bright, poppy soundtrack because it was so often annoying. It would have fit perfectly with an I Love Lucy episode.

At least the clothes were great and actually matched the characters wearing them. Audrey, the focused professional newscaster, wore Dior dresses and suits. Claire, her weather-girl rival, wore knock-offs of Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian trapeze dresses.

Marlène, the police inspector’s secretary, wore good-quality department-store dresses. Alice, the up-and-coming girl journalist, wore student clothes because she hasn’t yet figured out that people treat you by how you appear.

These episodes also don’t take place in Paris. Instead, the series is set in Lille, a city far to the north, on the Belgian border. Perhaps a French audience could see that the characters are provincials and that’s why they behave like Keystone Kops.

This was weird and very, very French. Give it your best Gallic shrug, take it on its own terms, and ignore Agatha’s name above the credits. She had nothing to do with this.