David Jonsson’s Nigerian diplomat Luke Fitzwilliam is bound for Whitehall when chatty spinster Miss Pinkerton (Penelope Wilton) confides that the sleepy village of Wychwood-Under-Ashe is a death trap. Hours later she is killed in a hit-and-run on her way to Scotland Yard, so Fitzwilliam swaps civil-service paperwork for amateur detection, digging through fêtes, parish politics and a corpse-strewn village green. Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre’s two-part script keeps the 1939 novel’s puzzle but moves the action to 1954, adding race, class and post-colonial tension while retaining every one of Christie’s red herrings.
Filmed in Tyninghame, Preston Mill and Sorn Castle during the summer of 2023, the serial looks like a chocolate-box Christmas card until the camera lingers on a bloodied church missal or a child’s abandoned bicycle. Meenu Gaur directs with crisp BBC One period gloss and Segun Akinola supplies a low, uneasy strings score that never telegraphs the twist. Supporting players Morfydd Clark, Mathew Baynton and Douglas Henshall dart between hospitality and suspicion while the killer hides behind floral curtains and Sunday manners.
The Guardian’s three-star verdict said the second episode “both overexplains and underexplains”; The Independent gave two stars. Both critics agreed Jonsson’s quiet charisma and Wilton’s brief but haunting turn are the reasons to watch until the final reveal on 28 December 2023.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 2 Episodes / 2023
Created by: Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre
Showrunner(s): Damien Timmer, James Gandhi, James Prichard
Writer(s): Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre
Producer(s): Karen Kelly
Main Cast
David Jonsson as Fitzwilliam
Morfydd Clark as Bridget
Penelope Wilton as Miss Pinkerton
Sinéad Matthews as Miss Waynflete
Tom Riley as Lord Whitfield
Douglas Henshall as Major Horton
Mathew Baynton as Dr. Thomas
Mark Bonnar as Reverend Humbleby
Nimra Bucha as Mrs Humbleby
Tamzin Outhwaite as Mrs Pierce
Jon Pointing as Rivers
Phoebe Licorish as Rose
