'Agatha Christie's Towards Zero' Sets Star-Studded Cast

Standalone Agatha Christie adaptations are usually high-profile affairs, full of A-list British names, but the latest limited series from the BBC and BritBox, Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero, may have outdone itself. Then again, it has a lot to live up to, as the project was confirmed in the wake of the success of Murder is Easy, the blockbuster two-parter that starred David Jonnson and Morfrydd Clark, and took one of Christie’s lesser-known stories and turned it into a timely tale about racism and misogyny in post-War England.

Towards Zero will run slightly longer than its predecessor and return to the three-part structure that Hugh Laurie used in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, initially kicking off this batch of co-produced Christie series made by the BBC and BritBox. However, unlike the previous limited series, the production has decided that for the first time, the BBC doesn’t need to stick to an all-British cast. Well-known U.K. favorites Matthew Rhys (The Americans) and Jack Farthing (Poldark) are toplining the new adaptation. However, they will be joined by two American-born actors: Anjelica Huston (The Golden Bowl) and Clarke Peters (His Dark Materials).

Despite technically being American, at this point, Peters has been in enough British adaptations, including co-starring in the shortlived Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, that viewers might be forgiven for forgetting he’s originally a New Yorker. As for Huston, daughter of John Huston, she was born in Los Angeles but spent most of her childhood in Ireland, where she still resides today, putting her more in the Gillian Anderson category of Americans who might as well be British.