Agatha
Christie's Seven Dials is a British miniseries based on the 1929 novel The
Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie. Dramatised by Chris Chibnall, and
directed by Chris Sweeney, the series stars Mia McKenna-Bruce, Edward Bluemel,
Iain Glen, Martin Freeman, and Helena Bonham Carter. It premiered on Netflix on
15 January 2026.
Cast
Main
Mia
McKenna-Bruce as Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent
Edward
Bluemel as Jimmy Thesiger
Iain Glen
as Lord Caterham
Martin
Freeman as Superintendent Battle
Helena
Bonham Carter as Lady Caterham
Supporting
Hughie
O'Donnell as Bill Eversleigh
Nyasha
Hatendi as Dr Cyril Matip
Alex
Macqueen as George Lomax
Nabhaan
Rizwan as Ronny Devereux
Corey
Mylchreest as Gerry Wade
Dorothy
Atkinson as Maria, Lady Coote
Mark
Lewis Jones as Sir Oswald Coote
Tim
Preston as Rupert 'Pongo' Bateman
Ella-Rae
Smith as Loraine Wade
Guy Siner
as Tredwell
Ella
Bruccoleri as Socks
Tristan
Gemmill as Doctor Jackman
Liz White
as Emily
Josef
Davies as Alfred
Episodes
No.TitleDirected
byWritten byOriginal release date
1"Bundle of Love"Chris SweeneyChris Chibnall15
January 2026
In 1920,
Lord Caterham meets his death in Spain, gored by a bull at the Plaza de Toros
de Ronda. Five years later, his widow Lady Caterham has rented out their
country estate for a party hosted by the steel magnate Sir Oswald Coote who
hopes to secure a secret government contract. Lady Caterham's daughter, Lady
Eileen "Bundle" Brent, makes romantic plans with Gerry Wade, her late
brother's friend and one of several overnight guests from the Foreign Office,
who intimates that he intends to propose to her. Gerry is known for sleeping
late, and as a prank his friends hide eight alarm clocks in his room. In the
morning, he is found dead from an overdose of sleeping medication; seven of the
clocks have been rearranged on the mantlepiece, and the eighth is later found
on the lawn. Bundle refuses to believe that Gerry was suicidal, and discovers a
letter written to his sister Loraine warning her about "the Seven
Dials". Bundle investigates, enlisting the help of Gerry's colleague Ronny
Devereux. She realises she is being followed, and receives an anonymous warning
note. While out driving, she finds Ronny in the roadway; he has been shot. With
his dying breath, he mentions his colleague Jimmy Thesiger and the Seven Dials.
2"Battle Commences"Chris SweeneyChris Chibnall15
January 2026
In a
flashback to 1920, it is revealed that Lord Caterham had been lured away to his
death from an arranged meeting with an inventor, Dr Cyril Matip. An unknown
woman attempts to steal Matip's formula from him, killing his sister in the
process. In turn, Matip shoots the woman dead. Back in 1925, Bundle confronts
the man following her, who turns out to be Superintendent Battle of Scotland
Yard. He urges her to end her investigation but she ignores him, persuading
Gerry's colleague Bill Eversleigh to take her to the Seven Dials, a seedy
London nightclub. There, Bundle spies on a meeting of a mysterious secret
society, disguised by clock masks. George Lomax, the Foreign Office
Undersecretary, is to host a weekend gathering at which Matip will be invited
to sell his invention to the British government. The details are secret, but
Bundle flatters Lomax into disclosing that Matip has invented a revolutionary
metal-strengthening formula. Bundle confides in Jimmy and Loraine, and Bundle
and Jimmy inveigle invitations. Over dinner, Matip demonstrates that his
formula has made a pocket watch bulletproof. That night, while Battle and his
officers keep watch outside, and Bill and Jimmy keep watch inside, Bundle
sneaks out, and is caught by Battle. The house is woken by a commotion, and
Jimmy is found unconscious and bleeding from a bullet wound in the arm.
3"The Finger Points"Chris SweeneyChris
Chibnall15 January 2026
Jimmy
explains that he was shot by an intruder. Matip is discovered in bed, sedated
with the same drug that had killed Gerry; his safe has been opened and the
formula removed. Battle takes charge, and Bundle impresses him with her
deductive skills. Loraine arrives unexpectedly and, after making an excuse to
leave the living room, flees with Matip's formula and the watch. She boards a
train, pursued by Bundle, Jimmy, and Bill. Cornered, she surrenders the watch
and the formula to Bill. Jimmy, revealed to be working with Loraine, shoots
Bill, who is saved by the watch. Bundle deduces that Jimmy had wounded himself,
allowing Loraine time to drug Matip and steal the formula. Subduing Jimmy,
Bundle confronts the true mastermind who is waiting in a carriage at the front
of the train: her own mother. Believing that the British government was
responsible for her son’s death during the First World War, Lady Caterham had
enlisted Jimmy and Loraine in a scheme to profit from the formula. Loraine had
poisoned Gerry, fearing he knew too much, while Jimmy had arranged the clocks
as a distraction and had shot Ronny. The conspirators are arrested, and Bundle
is taken before the Seven Dials Society. Unmasking himself as their leader,
Battle invites Bundle to take her late father's place in the organisation,
which works covertly for the public good. She enthusiastically accepts.
The
series titled The Seven Dials Mystery was announced by Netflix in April 2024,
along with the fact that it would serve as the debut production for Orchid
Pictures, with Chris Chibnall as the creator and the writer of the show. In June, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Helena
Bonham Carter and Martin Freeman were unveiled as the lead actors. Edward
Bluemel joined the cast in July.In November 2025, the series was retitled
Agatha Christie's Seven Dials.
Filming
took place in the middle of 2024 in Bristol and Bath, with Badminton House
standing in for The Chimneys, as well as Ronda, Spain.
"Henriques
de Carvalho de Rio Maior" refers to an ancient and prominent family from
Rio Maior, Portugal, with historical records of important members such as
landowners, religious (Father Luís Henriques de Carvalho) and local figures,
with many generations baptized and married in the Church of Nossa Senhora da
Conceição, as documented on the website O Riomaiorense. Although there is not a
single person "Henriques de Carvalho", the name identifies a family
trunk with several well-known figures at different times, linked to the village
of Rio Maior.
Who were
they:
Members
of the Nobility and Landlords: Several individuals with this name were
landlords and figures in local high society, such as one who passed away in
1871.
Religious:
These included the Reverend Father Luís Henriques de Carvalho, a figure
mentioned in baptismal records, and other members connected to the Church.
Local
Figures: The name appears in baptism, marriage and death records, indicating a
continuous and influential presence in the community of Rio Maior.
Examples
of Records:
Henriques
de Carvalho was born in Cartaxo, baptized in Rio Maior in 1785, and married
Gertrudes Leocádia Jesuína in 1812.
Another
member was born in Rio Maior in 1823, baptized with an ecclesiastical
godfather, as detailed on the website O Riomaiorense.
In
summary, "Henriques de Carvalho de Rio Maior" is not a single
individual, but rather the name of a family lineage with deep roots and long
history in the Rio Maior region, with many members recorded in local historical
documents, especially in the archives of the Church of Our Lady of the
Conception.
"What I wanted here
was something utterly unpretentious, very comfortable, with a veneer
of elegance and informality.”
John Fowler
The grand, but diminutive,
Hunting Lodge, former home of John Fowler, co-founder of the esteemed
decorating firm Colefax and Fowler, is now home to Nicky Haslam.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON UPTON
For Love of Country
Nicky Haslam,
renowned interior designer and London man-about-town, calls a
16th-century royal hunting lodge in the English countryside his home
away from home—rose chintz sofas, portraits, flourishing garden and
all
Driving down to
Nicky Haslam's country house from London, listening to the leading
interior designer and legendary partygoer sing along to Cole Porter
songs on the car stereo, we turn off a perfectly ordinary Hampshire
road and into the woods. Immediately, we find ourselves transported
from the mundane commuter belt to Little Red Riding Hood territory.
Winding along a muddy lane, we come around a bend and see ahead,
beyond a tilting, moss-covered wood gate, through the arching boughs
of oak and chestnut trees, the Hunting Lodge.
Nicky Haslam,
speaking on the phone. Above him is a portrait of his mother painted
by the Scottish artist Robin Guthrie. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SIMON UPTON
Haslam's enchanting
Jacobean-revival house was built in the 16th century for the Tudor
king Henry VII as a resting place from the chase in these once-royal
forests. It is said that here his eldest son, Arthur, Prince of
Wales, met his fiancée, Catherine of Aragon, upon her arrival in
England; Arthur died soon after the wedding, and Catherine
subsequently married his younger brother, the future King Henry VIII.
Charming history aside, the Lodge's true delight is its miniature
grandeur. "The English truly understand the dynamic between
buildings and land," Haslam says. "On the continent, the
country is tamed into submission round a house, while in America
homes are statements in that vast landscape. Most English houses,
grand or small, nestle in an intimate pastoral setting."
Once inside, the
Lodge is everything that is romantic about England, and perfectly
encapsulates that terrible phrase, "English country-house
style"—the combination of real beauty, some age, a bit of mud,
certainly a potted geranium or two and utter practicality. For
practicality is where the English, who never take aesthetics too
seriously, reign supreme. The entrance hall alone is a thing of such
charm. It is a perfectly proportioned, neat square, the paneled walls
painted in a slubby, satin, oystery color. The ceiling has a vague
marble effect. "To hide the cracks!" Haslam says. Centered
between two doors—one to a cloakroom lined with framed letters from
Charles and Camilla—is a console bearing a Baroque bust of an
18th-century nobleman, a pair of plants in cachepots and a basket
with various gardening implements. The door handles and fingerplates
are all ancient, brass and beautiful. The silk curtains, again in
oyster and hung from carved wood pelmets, are a nod to John Fowler,
legendary British interior designer and co-founder of Colefax and
Fowler, who was the Lodge's previous tenant. Today, there are still
quite a few of his elegant, understated hallmarks throughout the
house.
Haslam, sitting in
an outdoor pavilion PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON UPTON
Haslam leased the
house from the National Trust in 1978 or, as he puts it, "the
year Mrs. T came to power," and has been adding to the rooms
ever since. Each corner is filled with personal details that reflect
his eclectic style. There are piles of books on every surface;
pictures are stacked under tables and on chairs; end tables are
softly lit by pretty shades made from concertinaed Mauny wallpaper.
In one room, Haslam has hung the original floorplans for James
Wyatt's Waterloo Palace—it was to have been a gift from a grateful
nation to the Duke of Wellington after his victory over
Napoleon—which would have supposedly been far larger than
Versailles but funnily enough proved too expensive to realize.
Stacked against that are engravings and drawings from his friends:
Graham Sutherland, David Hockney and Lucian Freud. "I don't
consciously collect anything drily precious or impersonal; I just
seem to have acquired pretty bits over the years and, of course, some
of those bits came from now-famous old friends," Haslam says. "I
tend to look out for things with a resonance to my youth—artists or
objects that seemed romantic all those years ago. I never buy
anything purely for its value. I like possessions that smile back at
me."
This comfortable
country scene is in striking contrast with Haslam's London life,
where, in addition to running his thriving design business, his
evenings revolve around art openings, the opera, premieres, dinners
at The Wolseley and Scott's, shopping at Topman and holiday jaunts on
his friends' yachts. He is such a natural man of leisure that it's
easy to forget how hardworking he is. When asked about his recent
clients, Haslam says, "I really think giving lists of clients is
very common. But at a pinch you could mention Ringo Starr, Oleg
Deripaska, the Rodney Smiths in New Orleans, both the Saatchi
brothers, a mansion in Ireland, a chalet in Klosters, a mas in the
Midi, a couple of villas on Cap Ferrat . . ."
Haslam has also been
a columnist for the Evening Standard; regularly writes for the
Spectator; has contributed to Vanity Fair; is a talented artist—he
paints watercolors of the interiors he's designing for his clients;
and, as his earlier Cole Porter serenading suggests, he sings. He
recently headlined two nights at the Savoy's Beaufort Bar in London.
The best houses
reflect the inhabitant, and the Lodge is brimming with tokens of
Haslam's humor and buzzing social life. In the sitting room, the
walls are painted in oxblood mixed with distemper. "It's the
color of old cloth Elastoplast," says Haslam of its similarity
to Band-Aids. "They used to paint the outside of buildings with
it to stop the flies from coming inside." The glazed wood
mantelpiece is lined with photographs, invitations and Christmas
cards, which seems odd given that it's October. But then, one is from
the late Princess of Wales and another is a framed "Christmas
1965" photograph from Cecil Beaton. Over the past 50 years,
Haslam has rolled like a snowball through life, collecting colorful
friends, including rock stars, movie stars, royalty, oligarchs,
Etonians, couturiers, photographers, artists and godchildren, to whom
he collectively dedicated "Redeeming Features," his 2009
memoir. "We've all got Nicky stories, but you have to pardon him
for whatever he's done, because he's such a life enhancer. When
you're with him it is like the sun comes out," says Hannah
Rothschild, who recently directed a documentary, "Hi Society,"
about the designer.
The purpose of my
visit is to see the Lodge's latest addition, the garden room. The
outbuilding was originally designed by Fowler but had become run down
over the years. "I wanted to make it part of the main house even
though the two are not connected," Haslam says. "It clearly
needed a fireplace and when I found this dotty Rococo number, I knew
that a whole makeover was imminent!" He also decided to redesign
the attached working greenhouse. From the main house of the Lodge,
one walks through a Gothic door in the sitting room and out onto the
lawn. Double lines of pleached hornbeam trees lead down to a hidden
flower garden and an obelisk-posted white gate. Beyond, a meadow with
a rough-cut ride ends at the bank of a lake.
It is spectacularly
pretty, even more so because of the lawn, which is mowed in a
different pattern each week. During my visit, it was cut on the
diagonal and, as a very detail-oriented Haslam pointed out, the lines
moved uninterrupted through the gateposts. Looking back from this
vantage point, the main house looks like an 18th-century tiara, built
in the palest handmade pink bricks with a roofline topped by three
soaring gables. Roses, vines and magnolias garland the leaded
arabesque windows, under which rest antique metal benches. A lantern
with candles inside hangs from one of the vines.
The anteroom off the
sitting room, with a portrait of Haslam's mother by the Scottish
painter Robin Guthrie. PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON UPTON
To continue to the
garden room, one passes through the leaf-shaded greenhouse, painted
in the subtlest shade of gray-green and lined by a waist-high shelf
stacked with dozens of aged terra-cotta pots, geraniums and other
green things awaiting instruction. An open cupboard displays a
collection of blue-and-white china, a gift from his friend Annabel
Astor (mother of Samantha Cameron, the British Prime Minister's
wife). Then, through a tiny vestibule papered by Fowler in something
18th century, silver and flowery, one comes into the new garden room.
The interior is
lovely and quite different from the Lodge. It has a double cube
footprint with an airy, pitched ceiling and three large French
windows. A pair of sofas flanking the fireplace are upholstered in
rose chintz. Many of Haslam's own fabrics are here, including a pair
of show-wood chairs covered in a rickrack stripe he calls Zephyr
after his black Pekingese dog. The lavender Balcony Stripe curtains
are also the decorator's creation, available through his firm, NH
Design. There are other Haslam originals, too: a plastic pineapple
ice bucket on the drinks tray that he found somewhere long forgotten
and painted white with green detailing, as well as wall sconces also
painted white with green spots. It's a charming room built for
Haslam's larger groups of friends. "When I entertain, I like it
to appear as casual as possible, but in fact I will have orchestrated
everything quite carefully, by producing surprises for the eye, mouth
and ear," he says. "I prefer to do it all myself. I'm a
pretty good cook and the house is too small to tell the help where
things should go."
In winter, Haslam
entertains in the Lodge's frescoed dining room, as he did last
December when he threw a 16-person New Year's Eve party. In summer,
he prefers one of the garden pavilions, with drinks before and after
in the garden room. Since the house is located less than 40 miles
from London, the designer enjoys inviting people for Sunday lunch,
such as his "greatest friend" Min Hogg, founder of the
style bible The World of Interiors, neighbors like Jemma and Arthur
Mornington (she is the makeup artist Jemma Kidd; he is the heir to
the Duke of Wellington), and Tom Stoppard, who has learned to be
careful of the house's low doorways.
The walls in the
sitting room are painted in oxblood with distemper. The Marie
Antoinette bust, which Haslam describes as "a very good
19th-century copy" of the Houdon original, belonged to the
designer's father and sits next to a bunch of flowers picked up at
the supermarket. ENLARGE
The walls in the
sitting room are painted in oxblood with distemper. The Marie
Antoinette bust, which Haslam describes as "a very good
19th-century copy" of the Houdon original, belonged to the
designer's father and sits next to a bunch of flowers picked up at
the supermarket.
I stayed the night
and after dinner we sat at the kitchen table listening to old tunes
on Spotify, a new free website that plays what seems like every song
ever recorded. It was funny, really, as Haslam nipped off to the
fridge for a delicious bottle of Yquem, to think how I was in the
house of one of London's most glittering and long-standing
socialites, a man who knows and has partied with everyone. And yet
here we were, cozily sitting in the kitchen of a wonderfully
decorated house, with the spirit of John Fowler and some royal
romance hanging in the air.
I left very early
the following morning to catch a plane. Haslam was up at 5:30 a.m.
making me coffee and toast, with Radio 4 on for company. It was still
dark when my cab drove away, and as I turned back for one last look,
I saw Haslam standing backlit at the kitchen door in his dressing
gown, waving goodbye. Off I went, down Little Red Riding Hood's path
once more.
Noem in the hot seat after Minneapolis shooting
-
*Noem in the hot seat after Minneapolis shooting*
*The Trump administration is still publicly backing the DHS secretary, but
criticism is mounting...
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