There's nothing like a good Agatha Christie mystery to get the blood pumping and the little gray cells twitching. Ms. Christie might have been one of the most formulaic writers ever, but her formula definitely worked wonderfully. She had an eye for compelling plots that, even if many of them were constantly recycled from one story to another, generally kept the reader coming about for more. Ms. Christie had her own beat, a distinct rhythm to her writing, and if you knew the key and beat count you could probably spot every clue, red herring, and suspect right as they were dangled before you. For instance: why are the characters suddenly, for absolutely no reason that has to do with the storyline, having a discussion about ambidexterity? Why is another character bringing up the non-sequitur topic of the Anglicized derivation an Italian composer's name? Or perhaps the seemingly pointless location of a missing mole? Because they are clues? Gosh.

And if any character gets injured off screen, you know something's definitely awry there!

Yes, there's nothing like a good Agatha Christie mystery, and Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery is simply nothing like a good Agatha Christie mystery. Shot for British television in 1982, Seven Dials Mystery is filled with fine performances and impressive production values, but everything else seems to suffer in contrast. The pacing is stilted, the editing incoherent and frenzied, the direction flat and lifeless, and the storyline curiously convoluted.

The movie, in short, is dreadfully dull. After a practical joke involving alarm clocks results in (what seems to be) the accidental death of their friend Gerry Wade, several frilly and somewhat bored members of the British aristocracy decide to investigate. When another friend Ronny Devereux turns up dead, indicting a secret society called "The Seven Dials", it is left to Wade's friends Jimmy Thesiger, Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent, Rupert "Pongo" Bateman, Bill Eversleigh, and a host of other characters to determine who killed them, how the mystery involved the theft of state secrets, and who are and exactly what is "The Seven Dials" society.

I'll admit that the end of the final act was moderately entertaining, but unfortunately it was preceded by almost two hours of fairly boring material. Underneath the presentation of the material is what seemed like a fairly good mystery, but it was so lifelessly delivered and poorly directed that tedium and indifference set in long before the resolution of the storyline. Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery does little to intrigue or entertain the viewer.