‘Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials’ Review: Netflix’s Breezy Whodunit Is a Breakout for Mia McKenna-Bruce

“Isn’t she just ‘it’?” a partygoer observes of Lady Eileen Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce), blessed with the rather adorable nickname of “Bundle” and daughter to Lady Caterham (Helena Bonham Carter), British gentry fallen on hard times in the aftermath of World War I.

Bundle is, indeed, “it,” a description lifted directly from the two Agatha Christie novels (The Secret of Chimneys and The Seven Dials Mystery) featuring this plucky, mystery-solving heroine, who gets to be front and center in Netflix‘s new three-part drama, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials.

In order for Seven Dials to work, McKenna-Bruce must also be “it”; the series hinges not just on viewers marveling at her gumption, shrewdness and other synonyms for “pluck,” but on viewers wanting to watch Bundle’s further adventures, which are surely set up by Chris Chibnall’s (Doctor Who) adaptation.

Fortunately, McKenna-Bruce is absolutely “it.” The 28-year-old actress brings ample wit, charm and, yes, pluck to Seven Dials. Had enough people seen McKenna-Bruce’s astonishing performance in the British indie How to Have Sex, this wouldn’t need to be her breakout role, but a breakout it is.

How is Seven Dials beyond McKenna-Bruce? It’s a breezy and generally pleasant whodunit, albeit so slight that it feels a wee bit stretched even at only three hours. The show would feel better suited to be a PBS/Acorn/BritBox offering were Netflix not also the home of the Christie-inspired Knives Out films.

After a brief, beautifully shot (if questionably CG-enhanced) prologue featuring the death of an unnamed character played by Iain Glenn, Seven Dials jumps to the house party where Lady Bundle Brent is referred to as “it.”

The gathering is at Lady Caterham’s estate, Chimneys, a stately but somewhat gone-to-seed home that she has been forced to rent out for the season. The temporary occupants are holding a bash, and Lady Caterham — who’s generally dyspeptic and possibly agoraphobic after the death of both her husband and son — and Bundle have been invited, which they find a little awkward even though, or perhaps because, most of the guests are from their social circle.

At the party, Gerry Wade (Corey Mylchreest) flirts endearingly with Bundle. They’ve known each other forever and he fought with her late brother in the war, but he indicates now that he has a question he wants to put to her at a dinner the next week. Bundle is convinced that a proposal is coming and, so far as we can tell, she’s very into the idea.

The next morning, Gerry is found dead in his bed. The doctors and one particularly bumbling local detective suspect suicide, but Bundle can’t figure out why a man who seemed to be making plans for a long-term future would end his life. Bundle is not a woman to accept a disagreeable result, so she begins an investigation during which the words “seven dials” keep popping up. Is it a cryptic clue related to the seven clocks found on Gerry’s nightstand? To a particularly seedy neighborhood of London? Something more? Who’s to say?

Who can Bundle trust? Gerry’s friends Jimmy (Edward Bluemel), Ronnie (Nabhaan Rizwan) and Bill (Hughie O’Donnell)? The odd guy with the mustache (Martin Freeman) who’s constantly skulking around wherever Bundle happens to be? The Cameroonian scientist (Nyasha Hatendi’s Dr. Matip), whose new invention may hold the key to preventing future wars?

One of many things Rian Johnson has done so well with the Knives Out movies is use stars as shorthand. He packs the screen with so many A-listers that even if he can’t adequately service his whole ensemble — Wake Up Dead Man probably reached a new level of star-wasting — the sheer celebrity wattage is enough to add energy, even in the obligatory chamber room scenes where Benoit Blanc monologues his way through details that might be perilously dry otherwise. The same is true with Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie adaptations; those films have many problems, but cast depth is not among them. If you have Jeremy Renner or Leslie Odom Jr. (or Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp), the audience will meet you halfway.

Chibnall and series director Chris Sweeney’s cast is quite capable — Rizwan, a scene stealer in Netflix’s Kaos, and Mylchreest, part of the most annoying subplot in Netflix’s Hostage, are among the standouts. But they need material, and in the long explanatory scenes, the good material has to go to McKenna-Bruce and the two or three most instantly recognizable stars.

Bonham Carter is expertly aloof, but vanishes for long stretches, while Freeman’s part is largely set-up for season two, leaving everybody else generally playing “snooty” and “British.” By the finale I was convinced that there were three or four semi-prominent characters whom Chibnall forgot about entirely — or perhaps forgot to do anything with at midseason so that they could justifiably be treated as red herrings. That means that for most of the time, the mystery of Seven Dials isn’t all that mysterious, either because you’ll be able to guess or because there aren’t enough options to generate complexity.

Some of the expositional scenes have been fleshed out with appropriately Christie-ian flourishes, like an extended parlor reveal sequence here transplanted to a train. More frequently, the revelations that Christie set in enclosed parlors and libraries are, indeed, still in enclosed parlors and libraries, with predictably laggy results.

Perhaps that’s why any time the opportunity presents itself to get out and about, Sweeney pushes hard to get value out of settings like the wildly photogenic Spanish town of Ronda, all cobbled roads and arched doorways, or even the digitally augmented streets of 1925 London. It doesn’t necessarily make Seven Dials expansive, but it produces the necessary balance with the production design for Chimneys, which is at once opulent and claustrophobic.

With Freeman in tow, perhaps it’s best to think of Seven Dials as in the same vein as Sherlock, another literary adaptation that delivered three-episode seasons that often felt like they were ending just as the journey was getting good. Here, the journey isn’t necessarily thrilling, nor is it as intellectually adroit as peak Sherlock, but it’s lively and easygoing entertainment. And for most viewers, Mia McKenna-Bruce will be a most agreeable discovery.