And Then There Were None does not waste a minute of its three hours. The BBC One adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel aired across three nights, from 26 to 28 December 2015, and it arrives with a premise that has outlived nearly every other mystery written in the last century: a killer working through a nursery rhyme on an island off the Devon coast.
Sarah Phelps wrote it. Craig Viveiros directed it. What they built is less a drawing-room puzzle than a slow execution, and it drew critical acclaim, high ratings and 6 million viewers on debut.
Trailer, via BBC.
Ten Strangers on Soldier Island
The setup is exact. Eight people who have never met arrive on Soldier Island in late August 1939, invited under separate pretexts by a “Mr and Mrs Owen.” The hosts are not there. The caretakers, Thomas and Ethel Rogers, are.
At dinner the guests notice a centrepiece: ten stylised Art Deco figurines, apparently soldiers. After the meal, a gramophone recording plays, and a voice accuses every person in the room of having committed a murder. One guest dies of poisoning that night. The deaths do not stop.
Each killing mirrors a line from a rhyme posted in the bedrooms. With every death, a figurine comes off the table. That mechanic — the rhyme, the figurines, the countdown — is what makes the story work as television rather than as a novel, because it gives the audience something to watch shrink.
Charles Dance and the Cast That Carries It
The ensemble is the reason this holds. Charles Dance plays Justice Lawrence Wargrave. Maeve Dermody is Vera Claythorne. Aidan Turner is Philip Lombard. Burn Gorman is D.S. William Blore. Toby Stephens is Dr. Edward Armstrong. Miranda Richardson is Emily Brent. Noah Taylor is Thomas Rogers. Sam Neill is General John MacArthur. Anna Maxwell Martin is Ethel Rogers. Douglas Booth is Anthony Marston.
That is ten names doing ten jobs, and none of them is decorative. Dermody, notably, was cast two days before the script read-through while she was in Myanmar. She flew to the UK, worked with a dialect coach, and read the book during the first two weeks of filming. That is a compressed runway for a lead role, and it does not show on screen.
A Nursery Rhyme as a Body Count
The rhyme is not atmosphere. It is structure. Christie built the novel so that the order of deaths is legible to anyone paying attention, and Phelps keeps that spine intact. The terror is arithmetic.
The island does the rest. The weather sours. The group is cut off. Every guest is carrying a conscience, and the script lets that weight sit on them between bodies rather than explaining it away. The show trusts the audience to keep count.
What Three Episodes Buy
Three episodes is the right length. A longer run would pad the middle; a single film would gut the middle. At three parts, the adaptation has room to stage the accusation and the first death, then let the unravelling run, and it cuts before any of it goes soft.
The cinematography drew praise on release, and it earns it. Soldier Island reads as genuinely isolated — a rock, not a set.
Ratings and Reception
The drama debuted to 6 million viewers and scored high ratings across its run. It received critical acclaim, with praise directed at the writing, the performances, and the cinematography.
The Numbers Behind the Broadcast
- Network: BBC One
- Episodes: 3, across 1 season
- First aired: 26 December 2015
- Last aired: 28 December 2015
- Debut viewers: 6 million
- Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
- Score: 8.6/10
- Source novel: Agatha Christie, 1939
- Writer: Sarah Phelps
- Director: Craig Viveiros
How the 2015 Series Compares
| Element | Christie’s 1939 novel | BBC One 2015 series |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Book | 3-part television drama |
| Setting | — | Soldier Island, off Devon, late August 1939 |
| Countdown device | — | Figurines removed with each death |
| Adapter | — | Sarah Phelps |
| Director | — | Craig Viveiros |
What Clay Tribune Makes of It
What matters here is the discipline. And Then There Were None could have coasted on Christie’s name and a famous cast, and instead it treats the rhyme as a clock and the island as a trap that closes. The figurine on the table is the whole show in miniature: a small object that tells you exactly how much time is left, and never lies.
The noise around this production was the cast list. The thing worth watching is the count.
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