Agatha Christie Screen Spotlight: 1980s British TV Movie ‘Seven Dials Mystery’
There’s something especially cozy about British TV from the 1980s, and director Tony Wharmby imparts that specific quality to his 1981 TV-movie adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery. Dismissed by many critics at the time it was released, The Seven Dials Mystery is a bit of a Christie outlier for its emphasis on an almost James Bond-like story featuring a shadowy secret society. It still focuses on a murder mystery in a genteel English setting, though, with one of Christie’s recurring detective characters in a supporting role.
In Wharmby’s Seven Dials Mystery, Superintendent Battle (Harry Andrews) remains in the background for most of the story, with outgoing heiress Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (Cheryl Campbell) taking on the main investigative role, after a man is murdered at her family’s estate. Bundle isn’t there at the time of the murder, since her father, Lord Caterham (John Gielgud), has rented out the estate known as Chimneys to one of his associates. At a weekend gathering of old friends, many of them employed by the Foreign Office, government bureaucrat Gerald Wade (Robert Longden) is found dead of a chloral overdose.
At first, the seven dials of the title seem to refer to the alarm clocks that Gerald’s friends placed in his room as a prank, but they take on a greater meaning when Gerald’s associate and fellow houseguest Ronny Devereux (John Vine) is found shot to death on the side of the road near Chimneys.
As in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, which Wharmby and screenwriter Pat Sandys had adapted the year before, the central mystery here hinges on a man’s dying words. Bundle herself discovers Ronny after she thinks she’s hit him with her car, and he manages to eke out, “Seven Dials … tell Jimmy Thesiger,” before he expires.
By that point, Bundle has already immersed herself in the case, which she finds extraordinarily exciting. Campbell brings a sparkling wit to the role, and her repartee with Gielgud as the grumpy Lord Caterham — who’s merely huffy that someone was rude enough to be murdered in his house — is one of the movie’s highlights.
Unlike some later interpretations of young female Christie protagonists (as in Hugh Laurie’s version of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?), this take on Bundle still renders her slightly helpless, overly prone to fainting. “I’m not sure, but I think I’m frightened,” she says during one particularly dangerous endeavor, and she often relies on her male companions to support and rescue her. She’s just as often offended when they assume she can’t take care of herself, though, and her father understands that she’s entirely capable and independent.
He sends her to meet with Battle, but Battle is more of a by-the-book detective than someone like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, and he does most of his investigating via official channels, while giving Bundle a wink and nod when she hints at her own amateur sleuthing. Instead, she enlists Gerald’s friends Bill Eversleigh (Christopher Scoular) and the aforementioned Jimmy Thesiger (James Warwick), along with Gerald’s grief-stricken half-sister Lorraine (Lucy Gutteridge).
This team of proper upper-class English ladies and gentlemen (Jimmy describes his profession as “a sort of man about town”) makes for an amusing crime-solving crew, and Wharmby gets a lot of mileage out of their sometimes stuffy reactions to the seedy activities they get involved with. That includes the Seven Dials, which turns out to refer both to a disreputable nightclub and to a secret society that meets in one of its back rooms, complete with silly-looking clock-themed hoods to mask the members’ identities. Battle lets the group explore on their own, before swooping in with his own carefully considered solution to the case.
As was common practice for British TV at the time, Seven Dials Mystery was shot using film for its exterior scenes and video for its interior scenes, which can lead to some jarring visual transitions, especially when characters are running in and out of a country estate late at night. But that also gives it an instantly recognizable look, which contributes to the cozy feeling.
In the U.K., Seven Dials Mystery was broadcast as part of London Weekend Television, and in the U.S. it’s the kind of thing that would have been in regular rotation on PBS alongside other British imports. It’s comforting and familiar, with a dry sense of humor that sometimes sneaks up on you. The story that may have seemed like an unwelcome change of pace in 1929 now feels like quintessential Christie, and the adaptation is similarly satisfying.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for Vulture, IndieWire, CBR, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.