L'Heure zéro (Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie)

L'Heure zéro (Zero Hour) is the 25th episode of season 2 of the French TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. It was produced by Escazal Films and France Télévisions, directed by Nicolas Picard-Dreyfuss and first aired on France 2 on 13 September 2019. It is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel Towards Zero.

Synopsis
Like the rest of the episodes of season 2 of this series, the original Christie detective characters have been replaced. The lead roles are taken by a French detective Commissaire Swan Laurence assisted by a journalist Alice Avril and Laurence's secretary Marlene. The action is set in Lille in the 1950s. In this episode, Alice resigns from her newspaper to join TV Nord. She wants to work with news anchor Audrey Fontaine but ends up assisting celebrity chef Maxime Beaumont. Soon the head of the channel is murdered. Marlene has no sympathy for Maxime who abandoned her years ago for another woman. She is certain Maxime is the killer and sets out to prove it.

Plot Summary
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) The story opens with the death by apparently accidental drowning of the well-known TV news anchor Roger Foucher after falling into the water while fishing from a boat in the middle of a lake. With his death, Jean Devandière, the head of TV Nord appoints Audrey Fontaine as the news anchor. It's a history-making move as Audrey is likely the first woman anchor in France. It's also controversial and Jean begins to receive death threats by viewers who oppose the idea. Nonetheless, Alice Avril is inspired to resign from her newspaper to join TV Nord with the hope of working with Audrey. She is accepted, but ends up assisting celebrity chef Maxime Beaumont on a cooking show. The womanising Maxime soon starts to make moves on Alice, although he is married to Claire, a presenter on the channel and was d cpreviously married to Audrey for ten years.

As always, death follows Alice, although she is not the one who discovers the dead body this time. Jean Devandière is fond stabbed to death. The murder weapon is Maxime's roast knife which is found with only his fingerprints on it. Maxime is called up for questioning. He does have a motive: Devandière had bought over Maxime's failing restaurant which now reverts to him. But he also has an alibi as he was at his restaurant, cakompletely drunk, at the time of the murder. Marlene is shocked to meet Maxime in Laurence's office. It turns out he was supposed to marry her some ten years ago but walked out on her two days before the wedding claiming he wanted to join a monastery--and instead he had gone on to marry first Audrey and then Claire. Marlene is certain Maxime is the murderer and sets out to prove it.

Devandière had been drugged before being stabbed. Marlene intercepts the lab report and changes what th is says about which drug was used: from strychnine to digitaline. She had earlier seen Maxime use digitaline for a heart condition and wants to incriminate him. This proves enough for Laurence and he arrests Maxime.

Laurence soon sees through Marlene's deception and releases Maxime. Suspicion now falls on Claire and the producer Ted Gautier (the Ted Latimer parallel). Alice has learnt that they are having an affair. Ted stands to take over from Devandière. And he plans to appoint Claire as the news anchor. So both have motives. Claire, on the other hand, points the finger at Audrey. After all, she never got over her divorce and was still bitter about being dumped by Maxime. She might have killed Devandière and planted the knife to get back at Maxime. Laurence questions Audrey but somehow is not convinced that she is the killer.

Shortly afterwards, Claire is found dead at the station, having been bludgeoned to death. Maxime could be a suspect as he has been seen wanting to come back to Audrey or moving on to Alice.It could also be Ted, once he realised Claire didn't want to leave Maxime for him and only used him to get the anchor job. But Alice is convinced it is Audrey. Maxime was presenting his cooking show with her during the time of the murder. Audrey's blood stained glove is found near the crime scene. Furthermore strychnine is found on her. That's enough for Laurence and he arrests her

Marlene feels guilty about the trouble she has caused and decides to make amends. She asks Glissant to keep Laurence occupied while she goes to the lock up to talk to Audrey. Audrey confides that she is not the scorned woman that so many people think. She in fact was the one who left Maxime and not the other way around. She had fallen in love with another man (the Adrian Royde parallel) and divorced Maxime. But the man died in a car accident before they could marry. Maxime knew a dark secret about a fake scoop she had made as a young journalist and used this to blackmail her. He threatened to reveal this unless she pretended that Maxime was the one who left her and not the other way around.

Back at the station, and with Audrey and Claire out of the picture, Ted decides to try Alice as the news anchor. Ted tells her to study Audrey's style, and follow her movements and way of speaking. Alice takes this seriously. She does up her hasheir and dresses like Audrey and begins watching tapes of Audrey's broadcasts and mimicking her diction. Maxime comes across Alice practicing late into the night and suggests that they go to his restaurant for dinner. Marlene had earlier warned Alice that Maxime is dangerous and she must not let him sweet-talk her. But like all the others, Alice can't resist his charm either and she agrees.

Laurence gets a visitor. It's Foucher's son and he tells him that his father hated fishing and couldn't swim. It was inconceivable that he would take a boat to the middle of a lake to fish. If it wasn't an accident, it was murder and it would take a certain kind of murderer. It would take a strong man. A woman like Audrey would not have been strong enough to throw Foucher overboard. Together with Marlene's information, the pieces are beginning to fall in place. There's one last piece: Laurence makes some calls and learns that shortly after Maxime's divorce with Audrey, he had spent time at a psychiatric hospital. So Audrey wasn't trying to get back at Maxime, Maxime was trying to get back at Audrey! Laurence, Arlette and Marlene rush to the TV station where they learn that Maxime had go to his restaurant with Alice.

At Maxime's restaurant, things begin to go weird. Maxime starts to call Alice "Audrey" and blames her for ruining his life. He grabs a knife and heads towards her intending to kill her. Fortunately Laurence arrives in time to stop him.

Laurence reconstructs Maxime's plan from the beginning. He had killed Foucher and then convinced Devandière to engage Audrey as an anchor in order to draw her within his reach. He then killed Devandière but deliberately left the knife there, knowing that Laurence would think it is too obvious, and that once he presented his rock solid alibi, he would be released and they would stop looking at him and begin to look at someone else. But unfortunately his plan came awry when Marlene changed the report. The strychnine might have cast suspicion on Audrey but Marlene changed it to digitaline. This delayed the spotlight on Audrey and switched attention back to him. Maxime now had to devise something else. During the cooking show he disappeared backstage ostensibly to fetch some ingredients. Instead, he had gone to kill Claire and then planted Audrey's glove to incriminate her. Maxime confesses to all these events as reconstructed by Laurence. In addition, he adds one more. He was the one who made the car accident which killed the man Audrey wanted to mary.

Comparison with the original story
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read)
 * The setting is changed from a house on the Cornish coast to the TV Nord studio in Lille.
 * The equivalent of Nevile Strange's niblick (initially thought to be the murder weapon) is the roast knife of celebrity chef Maxime Beaumont. Like the niblick, it only has Maxime's fingerprints on it. In this case, the roast knife is the actual murder weapon and there is no other.
 * There are more murders and the manner of the killings is not all the same. Jean Devandière, the Lady Tressilian parallel, is stabbed with a knife rather than bludgeoned. In addition, he has been drugged with strychnine, suggesting that he was poisoned first and then stabbed as part of the killer's plan of misdirection. There is an additional murder, that of Claire Beaumont, the Kay Strange parallel. Here she does get bludgeoned, and the motif of a glove (green in this case, as opposed to yellow in the original) does show up.
 * Unlike the original, the handedness of the perpetrator, whether in the stabbing or the bludgeoning, is not a factor at all.
 * Unlike the original, there is no particular tension or reservation about having Maxime Beaumont's present wife and ex-wife at the same place, in this case, both working at the TV station. Like the original, it is revealed that Maxime was the one who instigated bringing Audrey Fontaine to the station.
 * Like in the original, the fact that Audrey left Maxime and not the other way around proves to be significant in solving the crime. In the original, the fact is offered by Thomas Royde. Here it is Marlene who elicits it from Audrey. Here also there is an additional plot element where Maxime used blackmail (of something from Audrey's past) to force her to maintain the pretence that he was the one who left her.
 * The Adrian Royde parallel is not named but did die by a car accident. Here Maxime actually confessed to it at the end.
 * There is also the additional death of Roger Foucher right at the beginning. His death by drowning was the vehicle for bringing Audrey to the station as the replacement anchor for Roger. There is no parallel to this in the original. Maxime also confesses to murdering Foucher.

Cast

 * Samuel Labarthe as Swan Laurence
 * Blandine Bellavoir as Alice Avril
 * Élodie Frenck as Marlène Leroy
 * Barbara Schulz as Audrey Fontaine
 * Nuno Lopes as Maxime Beaumont
 * Marie Berto as Arlette Carmouille
 * Dominique Thomas as Ernest Tricard
 * Cyril Gueï as Tim Glissant (as Cyril Guei)
 * Alizée Costes as Claire Beaumont (as Alyzée Costes)
 * Annette Lowcay as Marie Dupuis
 * Christian Van Tomme as Jean Devandière
 * Alban Casterman as Ted Gautier
 * Emmanuel Plovier as Louis (the TV director)
 * Thomas Debaene as Etienne Foucher
 * François Godart as Robert Jourdeuil
 * Bubulle as Bubulle the goldfish
 * Roger Foucher
 * Sylvia
 * Jean-Pierre
 * Louise, the flower delivery boy

Filming locations

 * Les Petit Bruxelles restaurant, Saint-Marie-Cappel - Maxime's restaurant.