Ordeal by Innocence, episode two review – Agatha Christie’s legacy is safe with this masterful BBC adaptation
As the second episode of Ordeal by Innocence (BBC One) began, two of the characters had ceased to be. Monstrous philanthropist Rachel Argyll (Anna Chancellor) had been fast-tracked upstairs. In prison, having been fitted up for the deed, her monstrous son Jack (Anthony Boyle) followed suit soon after.
It was a good start, but frankly, they deserved to die. When the mysterious Dr Arthur Calgary (Luke Treadaway) turned up at Argyll Towers claiming to have an alibi for Jack, we realised that each of the dramatis personae had a good reason to bump off the old girl. So far, so traditional.
Less expected was that each of the others, unwittingly, presented a good case as to why they deserved to be murdered, too. Everyone was so unlikeable.
There was Bill Nighy’s widower Leo, smirking round the mansion. Gwenda Vaughan (Alice Eve), the former secretary with an eye on the inheritance. We must not forget skulking housekeeper Kristen (Morven Christie). Christian Cooke as Rachel’s pointlessly angry son Mickey Argyll. Matthew Goode, having a ball as disabled war hero Philip Durrant, was relentlessly cruel to his wife, Rachel’s daughter Mary (Eleanor Tomlinson, Demelza from Poldark). It takes a fine ensemble cast to make so many different characters so fabulously horrible. In fact, only Calgary and the deceased’s other daughter Tina Argyll (Crystal Clarke) deserved to be spared. Everyone else was free to shuffle off.
In Sarah Phelps’s post-war retelling, the threat of nuclear war looms in the background. A swift intercontinental ballistic missile would certainly have improved the civility of the breakfast table.
Three episodes might be one too many, but Ordeal by Innocence is a remarkably taut piece of writing. In murder mysteries the balance must always be struck between revealing enough so that the viewer feels that they could have worked out who did it, but not so much that they do. This is why almost all such programmes hinge on a detective: a Barnaby or a Poirot or a Lund. It’s not we, the intelligent audience, who are being deceived: it’s the blundering dick.
Poirot would be absolutely terrified by Ordeal by Innocence
Without that device, here it must be achieved through hints and glances, quick cuts, and dialogue. By the end of the episode, there was a third death: another step that rightly threw us. For all our Scandi noir and sophisticated modern crime drama, Ordeal by Innocence proves that a masterful plot will endure beyond fashion. Christie’s reputation is safe in Phelps’s hands.
