Anjelica Huston leads the way as Lady Tressilian, a domineering, bed-bound dowager in BritBox’s “Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero.”
But the focus remains raptly aimed at her nephew, the memorably named Nevile Strange, his first name spelled by Christie to extricate both “evil” and “vile” from it.
Played with magnetic allure by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Nevile is locked into a dangerous duet with his estranged wife Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland ) as they wage a high profile divorce in a London court.
Things get more complicated, perverse, even a bit kinky from there when Nevile marries his mistress (Mimi Keene) and then opts to summer at his aunt’s estate – with both his current wife and Audrey, his ex!
“What drew me to Nevile,” Jackson-Cohen, 38, said in a Zoom interview, “was the relationship with Audrey. It wasn’t necessarily just Nevile as a character, it was how he exists in this co-dependent relationship.
“We spoke an awful lot about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton” – the couple’s notorious romance, eventual marriages and divorce were tabloid headlines for decades – “and used that as a reference point for the dynamics that play out with Audrey and Nevile.
“It was the jumping off point of playing someone whose whole existence, whether he wanted it or not, relied upon another person playing along with him, and being part of her game.
“There were all these complexities of the character: The element of privilege and that he’s this beloved celebrity, a tennis player who is looked upon as this ‘Golden Boy.’ He has this public persona out in the world, and then that detachment from that to who he is.
“All of that was great to explore and then you have these two people who are playing a game constantly with each other and pushing the limits.
“There’s a numbness to what they feel. So how can they feel something? It has to be by pushing themselves to an absolute limit of what is acceptable, socially. That just felt very, very important and to me makes complete sense.”
Christie is celebrated for her psychological insights into her characters. She often reveals events years or decades earlier that turn someone homicidal.
Is Christie presenting Nevile as the epitome of an upper-class toff? A man whose inheritance, good looks and athleticism have marked him from birth?
“We’re delving into these people,” Jackson-Cohen acknowledged, “whose highly privileged lives have nothing to do with reality, especially in 1936, being between wars.
“It would be easy to label Nevile, but I think of him as a spoiled victim of his circumstance, in a weird way.”
BritBox streams the first of three episodes April 16