SERIES REVIEW – Forget cosy, reassuring murder stories: Chris Chibnall’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials unfolds at a glacial pace. The sharp wit and light irony that defined the 1929 novel have been almost entirely drained away, replaced by a watered-down, Cluedo-level guessing game that wastes a genuinely impressive cast. Its greatest failing is also its simplest one: it is profoundly dull.

Following the latest Knives Out film and the star-powered adaptation of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, this three-part series further underlines Netflix’s determination to dominate the binge-friendly mystery market. On a surface level, the Jazz Age trappings are impeccable – exquisite costumes, luxuriant moustaches – yet the tangled string of murders set in country estates feels oddly lifeless. The sets breathe; the story does not.

Chibnall has assembled a capable ensemble, though it soon becomes clear that not everyone is acting in the same tonal register. Helena Bonham Carter and Martin Freeman are the headline names, but they often seem to be performing in entirely different shows.

Bonham Carter approaches Lady Caterham with earnest restraint, echoing her early-career “English rose” roles, now filtered through elegance and authority. Freeman, by contrast, leans heavily on dry, arch humour as Superintendent Battle, recalling his Sherlock-era Watson while pushing the character further toward comedy.

A Strong Performance Searching for Momentum

The standout is Mia McKenna-Bruce as Lady Caterham’s daughter, Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent. A BAFTA winner for 2023’s coming-of-age drama How to Have Sex, she slips easily into the demands of a lavish period mystery. Bundle turns amateur detective after her presumed romantic interest, Foreign Office employee Gerry Wade (Corey Mylchreest), is found dead in his bed under suspicious circumstances.

As Bundle digs deeper, the body count increases, but the tension stubbornly refuses to follow. Worse still, several overplayed supporting turns make the mystery far too easy to unravel. The killer’s identity is meant to shock, yet becomes obvious halfway through the second episode. And if someone capable of misplacing their glasses while wearing them can see it coming, others surely will too.

McKenna-Bruce nearly carries the series through sheer persistence. It is not the first time Chibnall has leaned heavily on a female lead; during his much-criticised tenure on Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker’s presence often did more work than the increasingly unwieldy scripts.

The core problem, however, is pacing. While modern attention spans may be short, there is still a clear difference between allowing a story to breathe and simply letting it drag. Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials rarely manages to move beyond first gear.

Hoods, Detours, and a Mystery That Never Sparks

The series also introduces an awkward, quasi-supernatural strand when Bundle learns of a secret society whose hooded members look uncannily like The Traitors contestants sneaking off to meet Claudia Winkleman.

These masked figures do appear in Christie’s novel, but Chibnall struggles to integrate them meaningfully into the murder plot. This is compounded by a baffling Andalusian flashback in which a mysterious man (played by Game of Thrones alumnus Iain Glen) meets a grim end in a bullring. Everything is eventually explained, though the payoff arrives as yet another anticlimax.

A decent whodunit must eventually crack the whip. Instead, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials trundles through its three episodes like a tired train clinging to its timetable. Over three tepid hours, Christie’s once-lively premise is squandered on a production that feels exhausted from the outset. Perhaps unintentionally, Chibnall has created a new genre altogether: the dozy crime drama.

-Gergely Herpai „BadSector”-