It was just supposed to be a practical joke. 

When eight alarm clocks are left at the bedside of Gerry Wade (Corey Mylchreest), Gerry’s Foreign Office buddies are just having a laugh at his expense: How much of a racket can the famously deep sleeper abide? But no one’s laughing the next morning, when the alarms ring at length until Gerry is found dead in his bed, the victim of a sleeping draught overdose. And one of the clocks is missing. 

This is Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, based on the Queen of Crime’s 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery. For Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce), the socialite sleuth who sets out to find out why her friend Gerry died, those seven dials are a tantalizing clue — or perhaps a deadly warning.

Writer Chris Chibnall (who’s no stranger to murder mysteries as the creator of Broadchurch) has been a Christie fan all his life. “I read pretty much every one of her books when I was growing up,” he tells Netflix. “I just devoured them. The Seven Dials Mystery was one that absolutely popped out to me on first reading, and it really surprised me reading it again — how modern it was, how funny it was, how lively it was, and the fact that it’s an early Christie. It has all the things you love in an Agatha Christie novel, but it has loads more, and it has things you might not expect.”

Read on to enter the world of Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, from its clockwork twists to its very grounded emotions. “We really set out to make this as human and as real as possible,” McKenna-Bruce tells Netflix. “We’re not just telling the story to tell the story. We’re telling the story and connecting to the people.”

Simon Ridgway/Netflix

Where was Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials filmed?

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials was primarily filmed in the city of Bristol in the United Kingdom, where locations like the Seven Dials club, Jimmy’s apartment, and Scotland Yard came to life. Other locations included Bath (the market square), Cardiff (the Foreign Office), and Minehead (the train station). Badminton House in Badminton, Gloucestershire served as the Chimneys estate. The production also filmed in Ronda, Spain, for the opening murder of Bundle’s father (Iain Glen).

What are the seven dials?

The seven dials of the series’ title have multiple meanings. First, there are the seven alarm clocks left on the mantle of a dead man; second, they’re the whispered final words of a shooting victim, fellow Foreign Office employee Ronnie Devereux (Nabhaan Rizwan); and finally, there’s the mysterious society housed in a club of the same name, mentioned by Gerry in an unfinished letter, located in a neighborhood also called Seven Dials. All of this will be uncovered by Bundle as she searches for the truth behind Gerry and Ronnie’s murders.

Bundle isn’t your average 1920s high society host. Her father, Lord Caterham, was killed in a bullfighting arena by mysterious adversaries, a scene that opens the series. Her mother, Lady Caterham (Helena Bonham Carter), is a homebody who’s still struggling with the loss of her husband and her son, who died in the Great War. Bundle is her own special recipe, an irrepressible young woman with a taste for adventure. 

“That was one of the things that initially drew me into the project, getting to play such a strong female lead,” McKenna-Bruce says. “Seeing Bundle, who is someone you couldn’t say no to, or [who] wouldn’t let anyone say no to her, was super exciting. It’s also the flapper era, so it’s a time of slight rebellion from women.” 

So it’s no surprise that Bundle refuses to accept that Gerry took his own life. The two were close; Gerry served in the Great War with Bundle’s late brother Tommy, and she and Gerry had a spark of romantic chemistry. Gerry even hinted at a marriage proposal on his last night — not exactly the behavior of a suicidal man. 

Bundle’s emotional journey after Gerry’s death is the heart of Seven Dials. “What can happen in murder mysteries is the murder can be like a device to create a puzzle that needs solving, and sometimes what gets forgotten as a result of that is the emotional impact of the loss of that person,” director Chris Sweeney tells Netflix. “So we made it all about Bundle: what she was feeling and her grief that was driving her to get answers.”

Who is Superintendent Battle?

As Bundle dives deeper into the case, she’s followed by Scotland Yard detective Superintendent Battle (Martin Freeman), who has his own plans. Battle tries to warn Bundle away from investigating, but she remains hot on the trail of the Seven Dials. She asks her friend, Foreign Office employee Bill Eversleigh (Hughie O’Donnell), to direct her to the club of the same name, where she stows away in a room with a clock table and secretly observes a meeting of the Seven Dials, a group of cloaked individuals wearing clock masks.

The meeting leaves her with more questions than answers. The Seven Dials are seemingly plotting to steal a formula for strengthened metal, created by Dr. Cyril Matip (Nyasha Hatendi). A gathering at Wyvern Abbey is their next target. Bundle recruits Gerry’s friend Jimmy Thesiger (Edward Bluemel) and Gerry’s half-sister Loraine Wade (Ella-Rae Smith) to help her infiltrate the party.

At the party, Matip hosts a demonstration of his invention’s strength, allowing a pocket watch of his own design to be shot with a shotgun. But the watch remains spotless — which makes Matip’s formula even more tempting to a thief. 

The thief strikes that night, drugging Matip and making off with it through the library, where Jimmy is waiting. A scuffle ensues: Jimmy is shot in the arm, and the thief makes off with the formula. The next day, Superintendent Battle breaks down the crime scene, finding a gun in the grass outside the window and a large, half-burned glove with teeth marks in the fireplace. 

Before the investigation can continue, disaster strikes — and we don’t mean George Lomax’s (Alex Macqueen) ill-advised marriage proposal to Bundle. Loraine clubs an officer over the head and hits the road with the formula and the watch. Bundle, Jimmy, and Bill chase after her in Bundle’s car, with the police on their heels. Loraine is headed for a train, and the trio barely makes it in time. Loraine’s guilt means the case is solved — or does it?

Justin Downing/Netflix

Who killed Gerry and Ronnie?

Upon confronting Loraine in the luggage car, Bundle finally gets the truth. Yes, Loraine is in on the scheme to steal the formula and sell it to the highest bidder. Loraine believed Gerry was growing suspicious, so his half-sister poisoned him with an overdose of sleeping draught. But the solution doesn’t end there. Jimmy is also complicit; he shot Ronnie, whose final words now sound like a plea for Bundle to tell the Seven Dials that Jimmy killed him, not vice versa. 

Jimmy reveals that he shot himself in the arm and threw the gun out the window, tearing the glove off with his teeth and throwing it into the fireplace. Jimmy fires a shot at Bill, and he and Loraine make a run for it. Fortunately for Bill, Dr. Matip’s recovered pocket watch is an excellent defense. Seeing he’s all right, Bundle takes his gun and heads after Jimmy.

When she finds him, Jimmy struggles to explain himself; the life of a bachelor isn’t cheap, and he needs the cash from the formula. He arranged the clocks on Gerry’s mantelpiece to distract investigators, but he insists he didn’t plan the crime. The mastermind behind the scheme, he claims, is at the front of the train waiting to receive the package. Bundle incapacitates him and heads off to confront this mysterious figure, passing Bill and a captured Loraine on the way.

Simon Ridgway/Netflix

Is the ending of Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials different from the book’s?

In Christie’s novel, Jimmy and Loraine’s treachery is the solution to the mystery. Here, things go further. Waiting in a car at the front of the train, the true architect of the Seven Dials murders reveals herself: Bundle’s own mother, Lady Caterham. It’s a twist unique to the series, which also swaps Bundle’s guardian from Lord to Lady Caterham. 

“It was you all along,” Bundle tells her mother. Lady Caterham planned the party that kicks off the series, all to bring together the people who could help her steal Matip’s formula. “She’s the person that she’s supposed to trust most in the world, and she can’t,” says McKenna-Bruce. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Lady Caterham has been twisted into grief-stricken bitterness by the loss of her son and husband. She’s happy to sell Matip’s formula to the highest international bidder, even if it comes back to haunt England, which she blames for their deaths. Lady Caterham reveals that the family is broke, and the formula is the only thing that can bring them back to solvency.

To Bundle, the explanation of her mother’s deep sadness is almost more painful than the revelation of her crimes. “You still have me, ma,” she says. “Am I not enough?”

When Lady Caterham begs her daughter to give her a head start in advance of the authorities, Bundle draws the pistol. Superintendent Battle arrives, and Bundle leaves the train heartbroken. But there’s one more secret to be revealed — and a future for Bundle that also steps away from the source material.

Simon Ridgway/Netflix

Who is Number Seven?

In the final stretch of Seven Dials, all seems resolved. George Lomax and company sign a contract with Dr. Matip, and Bundle mopes around an empty Chimneys estate, ignoring calls from Bill. “We kind of finish as we started, with her on the stairs looking around at everything she’s lost,” McKenna-Bruce says. “She's lost everything. And when I first read that, it was kind of soul-destroying.”

But Alfred (Josef Davies), a Seven Dials Club employee who once worked at Chimneys, soon arrives and invites Bundle — at gunpoint — to a meeting of the mysterious society.

Upon arriving at their clock-shaped table, Bundle demands that Number Seven, the team’s ringleader, reveal himself. She’s shocked to discover that it’s Superintendent Battle. “The Seven Dials Society is not a malign organization, far from it,” he tells Bundle. The society didn’t try to steal Matip’s formula; they’ve been protecting it. And they’d like Bundle to join the group.

“Battle sees Bundle with a bit of suspicion and is won over by her gumption,” Freeman tells Netflix. “He’s seen her come from a lineage of fantastic spies.” Bundle’s father, killed in action attempting to recover Matip’s formula, was Number Three of the Seven Dials, and Battle would like Bundle to take his place. 

“He’s studying her and testing her, to see if she has what it takes to become part of the group,” Freeman said. “The audience sees it differently. To them, it looks like he is just suspicious of her, but he’s actually noting down all the details of her skills.”

Battle doesn’t sugarcoat it. “This work is dangerous, will require travel to far-flung places, espionage, and a high degree of peril,” he tells Bundle. “We need you, Lady Eileen. We have a mission of the utmost urgency and danger, and we need you to start right away. So, what do you say?”

The final revelation of Battle’s intrepid team and their mission comes from Christie’s novel, but the possibility of Bundle’s joining them is new to the series. The young amateur sleuth takes a moment, the events of the past few days flashing across her face. She’s alone now, in the same way her mother felt. How is she going to channel that solitude?

As it turns out, losing everything isn’t always soul-destroying. “I feel excited for her,” McKenna-Bruce says. “It’s now a clean slate.”

Bundle stands, a smile crossing her face. “Tell me everything,” she says, and lowers Number Three’s mask into place. The game is afoot. 

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials is now streaming on Netflix.