Some Thoughts on Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials

Warning: This post contains both show and book spoilers.

When Seven Dials decided to put Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent right smack in the middle of the party at her ancestral home of Chimneys, and had her find the first dead body the next day, I thought, this is a good change. I am not and have never been a book purist. It made sense for the main character to have an emotional investment in the mystery. This Netflix adaptation took a curious, bored aristocrat off a 1929 novel and turned her into a heartbroken young woman who lost a childhood friend and almost fiance. Of course she was very willing to put herself in danger to solve the case. 

Then, it went a bit too far into entangling Bundle’s personal story with the mystery, and gave us an ending that was more a setup to a future season than a satisfying wrap. Netflix’s Seven Dials got many things right. It just didn’t stick the landing as well as it could have. 

Let’s back up a bit. It opened in 1920 Ronda, a picturesque town in Andalusia in Spain. A man we would later find out was Bundle’s father Lord Alistair Caterham (Iain Glen) was brutally murdered by trapping him with a bull. A card with a clock face fell out from his pocket. 

Five years later, and a nouveau riche couple, Sir Oswald (Mark Lewis Jones) and Lady Coote (Dorothy Atkinson), were renting Chimneys and hosting a house party. The guests included Gerry Wade (Corey Mylchreest), Jimmy Thesiger (Edward Bluemel), Ronny Devereux (Nabhaan Rizwan), Bill Eversleigh (Hughie O’Donnell), and Sir Oswald’s secretary Rupert ‘Pongo’ Bateman (Tim Preston). Bundle and her mother Lady Caterham (Helena Bonhom Carter) were also in attendance, though they had been staying at the garden house whilst the main house was being rented out. 

In Agatha Christie’s version, Bundle and Gerry only met once. Here, Gerry was a fixture in Bundle’s life. Gerry had been with her older brother Thomas in France fighting in the First World War; they were in the trenches together, and it was Gerry who pulled Thomas’s body out. After Thomas died, Gerry was a frequent visitor to the Chimneys, and a comfort to Bundle’s parents. Gerry had alluded to asking Bundle an important question; it was very clear that he intended to ask her to marry him, and she intended to say yes.

Because of Gerry’s penchant for sleeping in, his friends Ronny and Bill decided to play a prank on him. They hid eight alarm clocks all over his room. The next morning, the ringing alarm clocks caused a racket through the house but still, no Gerry showed up to the breakfast table. Bundle followed the family butler Tredwell to wake him, and found him dead.

The coroner thought Gerry either accidentally took an overdose of sleeping draught, or he took them intentionally. Bundle could not believe it. Gerry was known for being a sound sleeper, he has never needed medication to help him sleep. She also knew what no one else did, that he meant to propose. Why would he plan a proposal then kill himself? Both Ronny and Bill pointed out that Gerry worked for George Lomax (Alex Macqueen) and had been under a lot of pressure.

When Bundle found an unfinished letter written by Gerry for his half sister Loraine (Ella-Rae Smith), she was curious about his reference to Seven Dials, which he had asked Loraine to keep to herself. Bundle wanted to investigate this Seven Dials, and as she drove to London she happened upon a dying Ronny, who had been shot. Ronny, too, mentioned Seven Dials, and Jimmy Thesiger. And so it was that Bundle ended up working with Jimmy in trying to solve these murders.

Seven Dials only had three episodes, which I thought was just the right number for a story like this. But it also curiously felt like it added things that were not in the book, and also left multiple threads hanging. What was the point of introducing that conflict between Lady Cooke and the maid Emily? Why did Alfred leave his work as footman at the Chimneys? Who were the other members of the Seven Dials? The last two were in the book and were addressed; the first one, well, let’s talk about that.

Lady Cooke and Emily’s connection to the murder was that it was the sleeping draught that Lady Cooke gave Emily that was used to kill Gerry. How did Loraine, who was the one who poisoned Gerry because she thought he had gotten wind of the plan to steal Dr. Matip’s (Nyasha Hatendi) formula, even know that Emily had a sleeping draught in her room? How did she find her way through the massive house, through the servants’ wing, and into the right room that had what she needed, then come back to the party and have the time to slowly poison Gerry there? 

I did mention that Seven Dials got many things right, so let’s do a quick pivot. Mia McKenna-Bruce was perfect as Lady Bundle Brent – bright, driven, not invulnerable. Edward Bluemel was as I pictured Jimmy to be when I read the book, but with such effortless charm, it made me wish the powers that be changed his character’s storyline so we could have him around longer; as in the book, Jimmy of the show was the one who shot and killed Ronny, when he started putting things together. Dr. Matip’s brief story over dinner was a poignant reminder of the horrors of colonialism and war; that his precious invention of a formula for a metal so strong that war would cease to have purpose was eventually given to a major colonial power, well, this is an Agatha Christie adaptation, it would have been rather surprising if it had narrative space to interrogate this, though of course we can always hope.

In the book, the culprits were Jimmy and Loraine. Here, the mastermind behind the whole scheme was Lady Caterham. She learned about the formula from her husband’s loose-lipped friends. She did it mostly because she needed the money to maintain Chimneys and the lifestyle she and Bundle were used to. She was all right with betraying her country, because she was furious over her son’s death. Even with Bundle telling her she still had her, a sentiment that Bundle had conveyed before, Lady Caterham still thought of her son. A son was different, a firstborn. It was a well-written and acted scene, and familiar to those of us who have experienced being family disappointments for being born female. Here’s my issue with it: most of what that scene gave us, including this portrait of the slow decay of the aristocracy, the show could still have given us without making Bundle’s mother the culprit.

Sometimes, the resolution can become too sad, and unnecessarily so, especially when it does not really fit the overall tone the show seems to be going for. Bundle already lost her almost fiance. Why make her arrest her own mother too? What made it worse was that the show pulled back from this emotional upheaval a few minutes later. Sure, your mother may have been a traitor whose plan led to the deaths of two people, but your father was a hero who was a member of a secret society whose goal was to save the world. Who was funding this enterprise, which necessarily included very expensive international travel? Why must they wear clock faces whilst meeting in a secret place? Was Bundle just supposed to move on, just like that? Apparently, yes. 

There is much to enjoy about Seven Dials, and if this is the beginning of a Bundle series, I am all for it. As an insistent optimist, I feel confident the creative team behind Seven Dials can build on what worked in the first season, and craft a second that sings.

Rating: B

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