'Towards Zero' Finally Has One (1) Murder in Episode 2

Inspector Leach (Matthew Rhys) survived his fall from the Devon sea cliffs at the end of Towards Zero’s premiere. As there were no dead bodies in the first episode, the cliffhanger of the depressed, alcoholic police officer trying to kill himself seemed like it would be the only death in the first hour of the miniseries adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel. The only witness to his attempted suicide was Sylvia (Grace Doherty), the accused pickpocket and ward of the respectable lawyer Mr. Treves (Clarke Peters). She rushes over to Leach’s washed-up body on the beach, and he tries to scare her into telling no one about what he just tried to do.

When the series aired in the UK last month, some viewers spoke out against the absence of murder in the first ninety minutes of a three-hour series. In fairness to Towards Zero, Christie’s novel has a much longer “start to corpse” time than some of her other books – plus, the rushed conventions of today’s detective fiction TV may mean the average telly viewer finds even the typical amount of Agatha Christie build-up too tedious. 

However, it doesn’t excuse some of the more troubling adaptation choices made by screenwriter Rachel Bennette, like amplifying the darkest and most sordid elements in and around Christie’s text, inadvertently sidelining her puzzle mystery structure in the process.

Have no fear: a murder is committed in this episode, just after the halfway mark. On day two of the Gull’s Point retreat, our characters share a chilly breakfast. Neville (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Kay (Mimi Keene) insult Thomas (Jack Farthing), leading Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland) to confront them on their rudeness, Thomas doesn’t like being in the middle of some nasty divorce game, and Mary (Anjana Vasan) is upset to learn that her penpal beau was in love with Audrey before her. 

Everyone hates each other’s guts, and Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston) wants to thwart their picnic plans so she isn’t left in bed all day.

In an act of callousness that feels true to life, all the young ’uns blow off Camilla to go to the beach. There, the flirtatious Neville bounces between his new wife and his ex-wife (no foreboding disaster has ever been signposted more), and Sylvia’s swim is haunted with images of the Inspector’s near-drowning. Instead of heading back after the beach, they galavant off to the hotel where, you guessed it, Neville dances with his new wife and his old wife, while a dashing Frenchman Louis Morel (Khalil Ben Gharbia) dances with Kay and Mary – my oh my there’s a lot of jealousy going on. We saw Louis briefly in Episode 1, bothering Leach at the bar, but the policeman shooed him off by telling him what he did for a job.

As a doctor tells Leach, he is fortunate to be alive. Sylvia finds him standing at the cliff edge again for a much less intimidating encounter: he assures her she’s nothing like the delinquents he’s met, and it’s clear neither of them feels like they belong. Back at Gull’s Point, Camilla is making adjustments to her will with Treves. Earlier in the day, Thomas tried to blackmail her into saving the plantation (and him from bankruptcy) by threatening to go to the press about Peter James, a young boy close to the family who died in a hunting accident 15 years prior. 

Thomas is certain that Neville deliberately killed Peter, which is why there is distrust and resentment between the two. Camilla, to her credit, was unswayed by the threat, but still she doesn’t want to reward Neville with the country seat he so clearly desires. “Terrible thing to be angry with the dead,” says Camilla at one point. She hates her late husband for the mess he left her in. 

Well, good news: it’s not going to bother her for very much longer. After a nightmare evening at Gull’s Point, where Camilla gave Neville the silent treatment, Louis came for dinner, where it was revealed he’s Kay’s ex. Treves delivers the monologue we saw at the top of Episode 1. Everything climaxes (ahem) with Neville being caught going down on his ex-wife Audrey on the main staircase. Louis starts a fight, Camilla forces Neville to make amends with Kay (who is understandably furious), and manservant Arthur (Adam Hugill) slips a bottle of the barbiturate Veranol from the cook, Mrs. Barrett (Jackie Clune).

Well, what do you know – in the morning, Mary finds Mrs. Barrett drugged and Lady Camilla dead, having sustained blunt force trauma to the head during the night. Leach appears with the cops to gather evidence and ask questions: he deduces that Treves is hiding something, that Neville has a solid alibi (he went gambling and drinking at the hotel after Kay refused to take him back), Neville’s golf club is found at the base of the cliffs, making it a potential murder weapon. 

A couple of revelations regarding inheritance: Neville has not been given Gull’s Point in Camilla’s will, and Arthur is not a trained manservant, but in fact Matthew Hutton, the son of the Tressilians’ old housekeeper. He was Lord Tressilian’s illegitimate heir, and he is now, despite his protests, suspect number one for Camilla’s murder.

But if illegitimate heirs can’t inherit, what purpose would Arthur's killing of Camilla have? At the end of Episode 2, where Kay smuggles Louis back into Gull’s Point and we hear a man’s voice cry out in terror, we’ve gotten one or two more answers and many more examples of Rachel Bennette and Sam Yates not trusting the classical thrills of Christie’s novel, instead opting to soup it up with shouting matches and improbable, although impressively staged sex.

Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero continues with new episodes released daily; the finale arrives on Friday, April 18, 2025.