

Emily Brent (Miranda Richardson), a spinster trying to lead a morally pure existence with plenty of prayer at night, willfully contributed to one of her "companions" throwing herself under a train by refusing her assistance during times of need. General John MacArthur (Sam Neill), an ostensible pillar of the community, cannot forget the time during World War One when he shot one of his officers in cold blood for making love to his wife. In its latest incarnation, the novel works brilliantly as a Gothic thriller that takes the lid off the civilized veneer of a group of Brits (and one Irishmen) and exposes the guilty passions lurking underneath. Others have remarked on the way in which Sarah Phelps's screenplay transforms Agatha Christie's best-selling novel - which has endured a long life as a play, as well as being repeatedly remade for the screen - into a three-hour epic full of thunder and lightning, both meteorological as well as psychological.
