On a hot day in late August 1939, eight people, all strangers to each other, are invited to a small, isolated island off the coast of Devon, England, called Soldier's Island, by a "Mr. and Mrs. Owen". The guests settle in at the manor home on the island tended by two newly hired servants, a husband and wife, Mr. Thomas Rogers and Mrs. Ethel Rogers, but their hosts are absent. When the guests sit down to dinner, they notice the centrepiece, ten abstract art deco figurines of jade, supposedly representing ten soldiers arranged in a circle. Afterward, Mr. Rogers puts on a gramophone record, from which a voice accuses everyone present of a murder. Shortly after this, one of the party dies from poisoning, and then more and more people are murdered, all in methods synonymous with a poem affixed to the back of each bedroom door. With each death, the murderer removes a figurine from the centerpiece to coincide with the rhyme's sinister disappearance of each "little soldier boy". The remaining people decide to work together. They must discover who the murderer is before they run out of time and nobody remains.
And Then There Were None was commissioned by Ben Stephenson and Charlotte Moore for the BBC to mark the 125th anniversary of Agatha Christie's birth. The adaptation was produced by Mammoth Screen in partnership with Agatha Christie Productions. Writer Sarah Phelps told the BBC that she was shocked by the starkness and brutality of the novel. Comparing the novel to Christie's other work, she stated, "Within the Marple and Poirot stories somebody is there to unravel the mystery, and that gives you a sense of safety and security, of predicting what is going to happen next... In this book that doesn't happen – no one is going to come to save you, absolutely nobody is coming to help or rescue or interpret."
Casting
Maeve Dermody was cast two days before the read through of the script and was in Myanmar at the time. She flew to the UK to begin work with a dialect coach and read the book in the first two weeks of filming.
Filming
Filming began in July 2015. Cornwall was used for many of the harbour and beach scenes, including Holywell Bay, Kynance Cove, and Mullion Cove. Harefield House in Hillingdon, outside London, served as the location for the island mansion. Production designer Sophie Beccher decorated the house in the style of 1930s designers like Syrie Maugham and Elsie de Wolfe. The below stairs and kitchen scenes were shot at Wrotham Park in Hertfordshire. Railway scenes were filmed at the South Devon Railway between Totnes and Buckfastleigh.
Episodes
Reception
And Then There Were None received critical acclaim and was a ratings success for the BBC, with the first episode netting over 6 million viewers and becoming the second most watched programme on Boxing Day. Each of the two subsequent episodes netted over 5 million viewers. On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, And Then There Were None has an approval rating of 92% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "Dark yet dashingly executed, And Then There Were None offers a brazenly misanthropic look at human nature." Ben Dowell of the Radio Times gave a positive review. Jasper Reese for The Daily Telegraph gave the first episode 4 out of 5 stars, calling it a "pitch-black psychological thriller as teasing murder mystery" and "spiffingly watchable". Reviewing the first episode, UK daily newspaperThe Guardians Sam Wollaston noted, " it also manages to be loyal, not just in plot but in spirit as well. I think the queen of crime would approve. I certainly do. Mass murder rarely gets as fun as this." Reviewing the final episode for The Daily Telegraph, Tim Martin gave it 4 out of 5 stars, calling it a "class act", and praising the adaptation for highlighting the darkness of Christie's novel, which he claimed no previous adaptation had attempted.
