Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials - Netflix Series

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

It's got the look and feel of nice, classic murder mystery, but the story is a bit clumsy.  We do have a cute girl playing the lead, and she drives a cool old car, a Lagonda:

1932 Lagonda 2 Litre

1932 Lagonda 2 Litre

This car looks a whole lot like the one in the show, though it's a little tough to tell, it only shows up on screen for a few seconds at a time. Ask Google to identify the car from a screenshot and it says it's a Blower Bently, i.e. James Bond's original car. I had a bit of a time sorting it out. In some scenes you see that the driver's door is cut down, but when you see the other side of the car the door full height. Nobody actually built cars, with different size doors, did they? As you can see from the photos, they did.  Anyway, it's not the correct car for the story, the show is set in 1920-25 and this one is from 1932.

There are a bunch of guns in this show. We have one scene where the swells, both men and women, are out shooting pheasants with shotguns, and they all seem to be competent enough. But then somebody gets killed (not by shotgun) and now one of the kids sends his butler out to procure a pistol. What kind of pistol does he want? 'One that shoots bullets with alacrity and has a stylish handle', just so we know the caliber of the people we are working with.

The story is that a man from Cameroon has invented a process that makes steel very much stronger, and all the European powers are competing for the rights to his patent.  Seems unlikely, but history is full of such unlikely stories, so I went looking for one that might be the basis for this. Found a variety of African-American inventors, and a couple form Cameroon, but nothing that sounded like it might have been earth-shaking, which is what need for this story.

Cast

Actor	Surname	Title	Character	Surname
Mia	McKenna-Bruce	Lady	Eileen "Bundle"	Brent	Our girl
Edward	Bluemel		Jimmy	Thesiger	one of the boys
Iain	Glen	Lord		Caterham	deceased father of our girl
Martin	Freeman	Superintendent		Battle	Scotland Yard
Helena	Bonham Carter	Lady		Caterham	Our girl's mother
Hughie	O'Donnell		Bill	Eversleigh	one of the boys
Nyasha	Hatendi	Dr	Cyril	Matip	Inventor from Cameroon
Alex	Macqueen		George	Lomax	Engineer
Nabhaan	Rizwan		Ronny	Devereux	one of the boys
Corey	Mylchreest		Gerry	Wade	one of the boys, our girl is stricken with him
Dorothy	Atkinson	Lady	Maria	Coote	old biddie, deft hand with a shotgun
Mark Lewis	Jones	Sir	Oswald	Coote	old bat, deft hand with a shotgun
Tim	Preston		Rupert 'Pongo'	Bateman	Coote's butler
Ella-Rae	Smith		Loraine	Wade	Gerry's sister
Guy	Siner		Tredwell		Caterham's butler
Ella	Bruccoleri		Socks
Tristan	Gemmill	Doctor		Jackman
Liz	White		Emily
Josef	Davies		Alfred

3 episodes, one hour each.

There are some cool scenes, like this one of Barmouth Bridge.

Barmouth Bridge - Episode 3, just after the 20 minute mark.

Barmouth Bridge is a half-mile long, single-track wooden railway viaduct across the estuary of the River Mawddach built in 1867.

Barmouth Bridge

Barmouth Bridge location on the Irish Sea

The estuary is within Eryri National Park, also known as Snowdonia, which sounds like something out of a fairy tale.

Being as this is an Agatha Christie murder mystery, we have a giant, old English manor house.

Badminton House

Badminton House is the stand-in for the fictional Chimneys. This is also where we got badminton:

Whether or not the sport of badminton was re-introduced from British India or was invented during the hard winter of 1863 by the children of the eighth duke in the Great Hall (where the featherweight shuttlecock would not mar the life-size portraits of horses by John Wootton, as the tradition of the house has it), it was popularised at the house, hence the sport's name.