HER cosy crime mysteries typically revolve around a genteel world where posh country-house parties and lavish holidays are thrown into disarray when a corpse is discovered.
Agatha Christie’s famous sleuths, dapper Hercule Poirot and meek Miss Marple, solved the complex murders in her much-loved detective novels — none of which included any sex or swearing.
But the BBC’s latest adaptation is littered with f-bombs and the most explicit sex scene ever seen in an adaptation of Dame Agatha’s yarns.
Instead of the usual Sunday night whodunnit that TV viewers were expecting, Towards Zero has turned out to be a rather raunchy affair.
Even Agatha’s great grandson has declared it is “in your face”.
More than 2.3 million viewers tuned in for the first episode which focuses on an explosive love triangle, featuring barnstorming performances from Hollywood’s Anjelica Huston and Sex Education’s stunning Mimi Keene.
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The action starts with a scandalous celebrity divorce between hunky tennis star Nevile Strange, and his glamorous first wife Audrey, who he has replaced with a minxy younger model called Kay.
‘An insatiable need’
Although sex-mad Nevile fears that no tennis tournament would invite him to compete if he were exposed as an adulterer, the trio decide it would be a good idea to take a holiday together at the swanky home of his wealthy aunt Lady Tressilian.
Spoiler alert — this is definitely not a good idea.
Halfway through the first episode, Kay (Keene), is shrieking with delight as she romps on a Devon beach with her hunky husband, played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen.
There is unfinished business between the former childhood sweethearts... in the steamiest scene of the entire series, he risks giving her oral sex halfway down a grand staircase.
But naughty Nevile can’t resist the breathless charms of his sultry ex- wife Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland).
There is unfinished business between the former childhood sweethearts, who snog passionately whenever nobody is around, and in the steamiest scene of the entire series, he risks giving her oral sex halfway down a grand staircase.
The pair are in full view of his wife and other guests dining below.
He has his head entirely covered by Audrey’s evening dress when Kay furiously confronts them.
Sam Yates, who directed the three-parter, believes the scene was supposed to be shocking.
He says: “I’ve always felt that it’s a shame to create characters or scenarios that are less interesting and dynamic than we have now.
“I do really feel that human nature hasn’t changed enormously.
“While culture has changed, our behaviour and instincts within that haven’t.”
And after shooting, actress Ella said: “They have a very toxic, twisted, exhausting relationship dynamic. They know each other so deeply. That’s a part of their intimacy.
Sex and swearing
“They don’t have boundaries so it gets quite dangerous because they don’t know when to stop.
“It’s an insatiable need to win and beat each other. That’s what drives them apart. It is really enticing because acting it, you don’t feel like it’s about murder at all.
“It’s more about desire and sexuality and very related to the death force and the life force.”
Writer Rachel Bennette said the scene was crucial to the plot: “All that follows the flow of the story.
"It certainly wasn’t done with an intention to shock or be daring.”
Agatha’s great grandson James Prichard also defended the sex and swearing — although he agreed there was no record of Dame Agatha, who died in 1976, ever using foul language.
“I’m pretty sure she didn’t,” he said. “She certainly wouldn’t have used the f-word. “It’s not a conversation I expect to have about my great- grandmother’s books, but these are modern shows.
“They’re grown-up shows. It’s an incredibly powerful moment. And on that basis I am comfortable with it.
“It’s fairly ‘in your face’, but it’s a kind of turning point, a crucial part of the show.
“If you tone it down you lose that power.”
It’s a far cry from Eighties BBC series Miss Marple, starring Joan Hickson as the title character, and the four Sixties films featuring Margaret Rutherford as the super sleuth.
While Towards Zero might be the most explicit adaptation to date, it is not the first time viewers have been left hot under the collar by modern screenwriters taking liberties with Agatha’s classic tales.
“I don’t think Agatha Christie used the phrase ‘f*** off’ a lot in her books,” one Twitter user wrote.
In 2018 viewers of the BBC’s adaptation of Ordeal By Audience suggested that Agatha would be “turning in her grave” at the amount of foul language.
One scene in the three-part mini series saw beleaguered and bereaved daughter Tina Argyll, played by Crystal Clarke, shouting “F*** off!” at a group of men who hassled her on the street.
“I don’t think Agatha Christie used the phrase ‘f*** off’ a lot in her books,” one Twitter user wrote.
But it was not just the use of four- letter words that ruffled feathers.
Mickey Argyll (Christian Cooke) teased his brother-in-law Philip Durrant (Matthew Goode) about not being able to “get it up”.
Durrant later made a comment about Mickey’s dad Leo (Bill Nighy), suggesting that Gwenda Vaughan (Alice Eve) had been “riding Leo like a seaside donkey” on the kitchen table.
F-word and sex scenes
Fans of the BBC’s Poirot adaptation The ABC Murders, starring John Malkovich, were shocked by a kinky S&M scene that same year.
Thora Grey, played by Freya Mavor, was seen walking her sharp stiletto heels into open wounds on her co-star Eamon Farren’s back.
And a 2016 adaptation of Witness For The Prosecution also included the F-word and sex scenes.
The BBC’s Boxing Day drama, starring Sex And The City’s Kim Cattrall, prompted a torrent of complaints.
One viewer asked: “Do you not think that this is a ridiculously sexed-up version of Agatha Christie? She’d be horrified at this!”
Another red-faced audience member fumed: “My heartfelt thanks to the BBC for making me sit through several sex scenes with my easily-horrified grandmother.
Agatha Christie my a**e.” At Christmas 2015 the BBC screened an adaptation of the novel And Then There Were None.
But some viewers claimed Christie would have been aghast at some of the more outrageous moments which included Poldark hunk Aidan Turner wrapped in a low-slung bed sheet as he stripped off to prove he was hiding nothing during the search for a missing revolver.
In another scene he appeared dripping wet in just a tiny white towel. One fan tweeted: “He should’ve been made to remove that towel. He was clearly concealing a weapon under it.”
There was even a debauched party fuelled by cocaine and brandy.
Characters swore with abandon and a timid secretary called Vera Claythorne featured in two different sex scenes — the first with her fiancé and another where she was bonking a guest at the hotel where residents were being bumped off one by one.
There was even a debauched party fuelled by cocaine and brandy. In 2009 an ITV1 adaptation of A Pocket Full Of Rye starring Julia McKenzie as sleuth Miss Marple included a character emerging from under a duvet and being told how “naughty” he has been.
And later two characters had sex on a table, then up against a wall.
At the time the author’s grandson Mathew Prichard, then chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd, which controls the rights to Dame Agatha’s work, said: “The sex scenes would come as a great shock.
“When she started writing in the Twenties and Thirties you just did not mention that sort of thing in novels.
“Although A Pocket Full Of Rye is one of her latest books, written in the Fifties, sex was still taboo.
“But she was not a prude.
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“And if she was writing today I am sure she would have put in a bit of bonking.”
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