Television continues to pour into American screens from around the world, free of tariffs. Catching up with international series that have arrived this year (or are just about to arrive), we have a pair of Netflix adaptations of famous mystery writers, a soulful anime about overcoming grief, a Swedish marriage on the rocks and a love story in China's wild western mountains.
'Agatha Christie's Seven Dials'
Chris Chibnall is known for creating the dark crime drama "Broadchurch" and serving as showrunner on three seasons of "Doctor Who." His loose adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1929 novel, "The Seven Dials Mystery," feels a little like a cross of those earlier shows. (Chibnall wrote "Seven Dials" and was an executive producer; Chris Sweeney directed it.) There is an emphasis on jokey humor, in the "Doctor Who" style of putting quotation marks around every withering retort and sly visual gag; and then there is a shift toward the dark and sentimental mood that often stole into "Broadchurch." Neither approach has much to do with Christie. (To be fair, a bit of business involving a glove that reads like a reference to the O.J. Simpson case is actually taken straight from the novel.)
There are compensations, though, some of which involve seeing Netflix's money right up on the screen. The re-creation of Chimneys, the setting of two Christie novels featuring the young sleuth Lady Eileen Brent (known as Bundle and played here by Mia McKenna-Bruce), is lovely. And Chibnall's manhandling of the plot meant that a crew and actors were sent to Málaga, Spain, so that two scenes could be shot in the ridiculously picturesque village of Ronda.
McKenna-Bruce's performance as the dogged Bundle is a bit more dogged than you might like, but it's balanced by an assured, archly funny turn by Helena Bonham-Carter as Bundle's world-weary mother, Lady Caterham. Finally, all of the country house murders, the scampering about of bright young men, the sleuthing by Bundle and the denouement, now set on a train (more lovely countryside!), is dispatched in three episodes totaling a bite-size 161 minutes. (Streaming on Netflix.)
'Jo Nesbo's Detective Hole'
Harry Hole (Tobias Santelmann), the protagonist of best-selling novels by the Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo, is on the bottom rung of the bottomed-out-cop ladder. In the first season of this Netflix series, based on the novel "The Devil's Star" and written by Nesbo, Hole (pronounced ho-leh) is grieving, on and off the wagon, suicidal and so toxic that his boss tells him to just stay home.