Turn back! Turn back!

At the end of the hour, in 95 per cent of cases, the bad guy is caught and everything is explained. And everyone can go back to knowing that there are dedicated, competent detectives looking out for them and their safety. Order restored.

TV crime writers no doubt took a few cues from British Golden Age crime fiction writers such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Holmesian creations would saunter in and solve the crime with their wits followed quickly by the villain’s comeuppance. It was reassuring.

Which is why Christie’s And Then There Were None was such a departure from her usual repertoire of charming Poirot and Marple stories. Originally published in 1939, on the eve of World War II, the novel was dark, gruesome and completely devoid of a comforting resolution.

For the 125th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth, the BBC has produced a masterful adaptation of the story, the first significant screen retelling in decades. It features an ensemble cast that includes Miranda Richardson, Charles Dance, Sam Neill and Australian actors Maeve Dermody and Noah Taylor.

Fiends, all of them. But who is most fiendish of them all?Source:Supplied

Ten strangers are lured to a great mansion on an island under an elaborate ruse by “U.N. Owens”, only the host never shows. During an uncomfortable dinner, a recording is played in the room in which every one of them is accused of causing someone’s death. Not before long, a particularly loathsome character fatally chokes.

One by one, they’re picked off in horrifying ways by an unseen villain in a manner similar to what’s described in the macabre Ten Little Soldiers poem found framed on the wall of every room. The group is also marooned with no hope of rescue thanks to a mammoth storm that’s cut them off from the mainland.

It’s a terrifying prospect.

Even those who have read and remember the ending of And Then There Were None will still be on tenterhooks throughout the entire three-part miniseries, clutching anything nearby with white knuckles as characters are dispatched with by piecemeal. Those who are new to the story will revel in the cut-it-with-a-knife tension, underscored by the ominous chamber music and bleak atmosphere, trying to guess who among them is the mystery spectre.

While the identity of the killer is the main game, just as interesting is watching these people, with their secrets, as they are haunted by their past misdeeds in increasingly gothic sequences as their guilty consciences manifest in nasty ways. It’s very Shakespearean and you half expect to see Banquo’s ghost at the end of the upstairs hall.

“I’m telling you, we’ll make it out alive.”Source:Supplied

And unlike the book, they’re not keeping it polite, they’re almost turning feral. And Then There Were None’s writer, Sarah Phelps, told news.com.au: “They’re watching this remorseless retribution head toward them. The atmosphere is so paranoid — it’s a bell jar of fear, jealousy and suspicion.

“All hallucinations that come from sleep deprivation, guilt and not being able to shut your inner monologue up, it drives you mad like the furies in Greek tragedies. You will see those faces, they don’t leave you — you’re guilty of a murder.”

Phelps said the story is really about not being able to leave the past behind, personally and as a society.

“It somehow manages to strike so many uneasy chords about our past sins and the things we’ve done that we thought we could get away with. But we can’t,” she said. “It kind of taps into this question of who we are and what we did to get here?

“None of our hands are clean, none of us are innocent, none of us are simply good.”

And Then There Were None will screen at 7.30pm on Saturday, April 23 on BBC First on Foxtel and Fetch TV.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @wenleima.

“Why so serious?”Source:Supplied