And Then There Were None (2015) - General Discussion

[Irlandesa]

GaT, both parts were 2 hours each but there was something strange in how the show was scheduled in my cable guide. Some of the marked part 2s were only an hour long and only recorded half of one part. Look for the segments that are two hours long to record.

Edited March 20, 2016 by Irlandesa

[dargosmydaddy]

I was a big Being Human fan, but never really got all the Mitchell love (at least in terms of his appearance). I couldn't get into Poldark. But hot damn, Aiden Turner looks amazing in this.

[GaT]

GaT, both parts were 2 hours each but there was something strange in how the show was scheduled in my cable guide. Some of the marked part 2s were only an hourselves long and only recorded half of one part. Look for the segments that are two hours long to record.

That's what I was expecting when I recorded it, but both episodes turned out to be an hour long. Neither one looked like it got cut off either, they ended normally. The part 2 I watched on the Lifetime site was 1 1/2 hours long (with no commercials), so my guess is that all I missed is 1/2 hour & I'll just live with that.

[annabel]

I mostly liked this, but I DID NOT like the judge confessing to Vera, I would have preferred a voiceover. I also did not like Vera hooking up with Lombard, I would not be dropping my panties if I was on Murder Island.<br /><br />I also did not like that so many of the "crimes" were actually MURDER. In the book the whole point was that what these people had done was not prosecutable. But stomping someone in a jail cell? Murder. Holding a pillow over someone"s face? Murder. Letting a small child swim out farther than he can maybe not swim back from? Bad judgement or devious intent maybe but not murder

[callie lee 29]

I would have preferred it sticking to the book (normally not doing so doesn't bother me) but the Lombard/Claythorne hookup seemed gratuitous (though still sexy as hell - taking advantage of killer chemistry). Also, like others I would have preferred following the note in a bottle ending.

Also, y'all can have Turner I'll take Mr.. Douglas Booth. Damn that man is pretty.

[bmoore4026]

annabel, on 20 Mar 2016 - 7:39 PM, said:

I mostly liked this, but I DID NOT like the judge confessing to Vera, I would have preferred a voiceover. I also did not like Vera hooking up with Lombard, I would not be dropping my panties if I was on Murder Island.<br /><br />I also did not like that so many of the "crimes" were actually MURDER. In the book the whole point was that what these people had done was not prosecutable. But stomping someone in a jail cell? Murder. Holding a pillow over someone"s face? Murder. Letting a small child swim out farther than he can maybe not swim back from? Bad judgement or devious intent maybe but not murder

 

Except when we see the full scene, we see Vera running, then stopping, and then sitting down on the sand, waiting for the right moment to run into the sea and make it look like she's attempting to save him.  She really did kill Cyril.

[Mabinogia]

The only one I would say was not an actionable murder was Miranda Richardson's character (sorry, terrible at names) who was a cruel woman, yes, but though her actions led to the young girls suicide, I don't remember a scene where we see her push the girl onto the tracks, or even tell her to go off herself. The rest, however, seemed very murderous to me. Especially Vera because she murdered a child for "love". Who does that?

 

I agree that they could have done the ending much, much better. Maybe have someone come to the island, see all the bodies, and we get a voiceover of the judge's letter then realize that the person had found the letter and gone to investigate. I was so distracted by how ridiculous it was that she was balancing on the edge of the chair like that that the whole scene lost a lot of it's power for me. It could have been a great scene but it was a tad comical with her balancing there.

[GHScorpiosRule]

The only one I would say was not an actionable murder was Miranda Richardson's character (sorry, terrible at names) who was a cruel woman, yes, but though her actions led to the young girls suicide, I don't remember a scene where we see her push the girl onto the tracks, or even tell her to go off herself. The rest, however, seemed very murderous to me. Especially Vera because she murdered a child for "love". Who does that?

 

 

I don't think she did it for love at all. I think she did it so Cyrill's uncle, would be next in line to inherit. She would marry him, and he would get all the wealth.

 

[Mabinogia]

Well, her talk with the boys mother was basically "he can't get married unless he gets the money" so I'm giving her some benefit of the doubt that if he had enough money to wed she wouldn't have killed Cyril but she wanted to marry him so badly she was willing to kill a boy to do it. Of course the idea of being too poor to marry is silly, but this was a different time. I don't think she would have done it if she could have married him without killing the kid and the guy had, you know, a job! LOL

[magdalene]

I watched this last night all in a go on demand and it was probably the best adaptation of this mystery I have seen.  I liked Lombard the best, he would have been the one I wanted to survive had anybody survived this.  He was the most intelligent with the most common sense.  And he had admitted right off to his guilt and didn't make any excuses for himself. As for Vera - what a piece of work, I am not sorry about her fate.

[mansonlamps]

That's what I was expecting when I recorded it, but both episodes turned out to be an hour long. Neither one looked like it got cut off either, they ended normally. The part 2 I watched on the Lifetime site was 1 1/2 hours long (with no commercials), so my guess is that all I missed is 1/2 hour & I'll just live with that.

I got the two one hour versions on my cable and the Lifetime app on my Amazon Fire doesn't have the show available at all, so my only option to see the whole thing is On Demand for $5.99 per episode. Since that's not happening, I guess I don't get to see it until Lifetime adds it to my app. Too bad since I really wanted to see it. Lifetime has really gotten bad, I've never seen a network so lame they've only offered part of a miniseries while advertising it as the whole thing.

[LJones41]

Very good adaptation.  It's not perfect.  Then again, not even Christie's novel is perfect.  This version, along with the 1945 version are my two favorites.

[ApathyMonger]

New this Christmas, from the same people who did ATTWN:

[LadyintheLoop]

Borrowed this from the library, and had to order my own copy. I’ll probably pick up more on the second viewing.

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I also did not like that so many of the "crimes" were actually MURDER. In the book the whole point was that what these people had done was not prosecutable.

That was my biggest quibble. In the book only Marston and Armstrong killed their victims directly, and they hadn’t meant to kill at all; the others didn’t see themselves as murderers. There could have been a flashback where Miss Brady, in the throes of a heart attack, scrabbled through her nightstand and cried out for her medicine; then Rogers could have laid her body out peacefully and pulled a little bottle out of his pocket. Better yet, Macarthur could have given young Richmond an order that made him blanch, then looked him in the eye and said, “You’ve been a great friend to my wife and me.” (That’s ME! Not I!)

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The only one I would say was not an actionable murder was Miranda Richardson's character[.]

Sadly, kicking a pregnant servant to the curb was nothing unusual back then. I think the writer turned Emily Brent into a jealous lesbian because she didn’t trust modern audiences to comprehend the character’s moral outrage.

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The judge convinced Armstrong to help him fake his death so that he could investigate without the others knowing he was doing so.

In the book, Armstrong had once testified before Wargrave. He knew the old man really was His Honor, and he couldn’t see such a personage committing a crime.

 

Off to the rewatch . . . 

[magdalene]

My local PBS station aired the first hour of this mystery last night before the new season of Endeavour.  I wish this production team and these actors could have done an adaptation of Murder On The Orient Express.

[ApathyMonger]

13 hours ago, magdalene said:

My local PBS station aired the first hour of this mystery last night before the new season of Endeavour.  I wish this production team and these actors could have done an adaptation of Murder On The Orient Express.

Different cast, but the production team are doing Poirot with The ABC Murders this year: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/abc-murders-john-malkovich

[AuntiePam]

On 3/21/2016 at 6:59 AM, Mabinogia said:

The only one I would say was not an actionable murder was Miranda Richardson's character (sorry, terrible at names) who was a cruel woman, yes, but though her actions led to the young girls suicide, I don't remember a scene where we see her push the girl onto the tracks, or even tell her to go off herself.

 

Yeah, I didn't get that either.  We saw the girl with blood on her face but what was in the scene that said suicide?  I missed it, and was left thinking that she beat the girl before kicking her out.

Also (apologies if this has been addressed), does the book or the earlier movie explain how Wargrave knew all these secrets?

[magdalene]

The only death that upset me was Philip Lombard - and not even mostly because of the gorgeous actor playing him.  I liked that character despite him being a cold-blooded killer.  He was smart, he had common sense, he was not a hypocrite - and like the killing judge pointed out, he was sane.  I was quite happy at Miss Claythorne's end. To me she was the worst of them.  Maybe because she was a child killer, maybe because she pretended to be lil' Miss Innocent for so long.

[Ceindreadh]

On 10/07/2018 at 1:44 AM, magdalene said:

The only death that upset me was Philip Lombard - and not even mostly because of the gorgeous actor playing him.  I liked that character despite him being a cold-blooded killer.  He was smart, he had common sense, he was not a hypocrite - and like the killing judge pointed out, he was sane.  I was quite happy at Miss Claythorne's end. To me she was the worst of them.  Maybe because she was a child killer, maybe because she pretended to be lil' Miss Innocent for so long.

I was happy that they kept the book ending. Too many adaptations want to have a ‘happy’ ending by letting the last two characters survive.  

[Mabinogia]

On ‎7‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 8:44 PM, magdalene said:

I was quite happy at Miss Claythorne's end. To me she was the worst of them.  Maybe because she was a child killer, maybe because she pretended to be lil' Miss Innocent for so long.

Hers was the death I was most rooting for. I couldn't stand her for all the reasons. She killed a child, she did it for selfish reasons, and she pretended she was so sweet and innocent and better than everyone. Oh, I was happy to see her die.

 

On ‎7‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 6:38 PM, AuntiePam said:

We saw the girl with blood on her face but what was in the scene that said suicide?

I honestly can't remember why I think it was suicide but that was what I was left thinking.

[SilverShadow]

Brent said the poor girl threw herself in front of a train. 

Just re-watched this and I forgot how much I enjoyed it. It had a great tense atmosphere and I think overall they did a great job peeling back the layers on who all these people were and what they did. 

[Mystery]

On 5/2/2017 at 5:55 PM, LadyintheLoop said:

Better yet, Macarthur could have given young Richmond an order that made him blanch, then looked him in the eye and said, “You’ve been a great friend to my wife and me.” (That’s ME! Not I!)

This was on PBS tonight and I watched the whole thing at once. I really liked it. Have not read the book. But that line! I assume that Agatha Christie didn't write "my wife and I"! 

[LadyintheLoop]

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Also (apologies if this has been addressed), does the book or the earlier movie explain how Wargrave knew all these secrets?

Miss Brady's doctor had told Wargrave that he believed her servants had withheld her heart medicine. Wargrave then developed a line of chat for new acquaintances, about murders the law couldn't touch.

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I also did not like Vera hooking up with Lombard[.]

I think it changed their final confrontation for the better. In the book the two formed a platonic alliance, but when they discovered Armstrong's body both thought

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If it's not me, it must be you.

Christie crafted her dialogue so that neither would realize that the other was on the defensive. Trouble is, there's no way that Lombard would have let Vera near the gun.

In this production, Lombard knows that Vera's innocent -- not because he's a sentimental fool, but because she has an alibi for the judge's "murder" -- and that, incredibly, there's a third person alive on the island. His mistake is assuming that she's a sentimental fool; of course she's going to think that he's the killer.