Ten guests travel to an island at the invitation of someone named U.N. Owen. All are strangers, but they have two things in common: they have all been responsible for someone's death, and none will leave the island alive. Over the next two days and nights, each of the guests is killed off in a different manner in keeping with the nursery rhyme, 'Ten Little Soldier Boys'. As they are picked off one by one, who could possibly be responsible? The killers are forced to turn detective so they can find the unknown murderer, but one by one they become victims...

And Then There Were None was originally published in book form in 1939, although it was originally available under a title that was quickly changed because of its racist nature. Billed as 'the famous detective story without a detective', this is one of Agatha Christie's darkest and most enduring tales.

The story opens with ten people, all from different walks of life, thrown together when they are invited to a remote island. The only way there is by small boat, with the ferryman promising that he'll be back the next day to return them to the mainland. However, the weather takes a turn for the worse and the ten individuals are stuck together in a large house for several days. However, their mysteriously absent host has other plans for them that will ensure that all of them are dead before the ferryman can return to collect them.

It soon becomes clear that they've been invited to the island because they've all been guilty of causing the death of at least one other person. Slowly, their mysterious host picks them off one by one - each being killed in the manner that the little soldier boys die in the 'Ten Little Soldier Boys' rhyme (This is the current, politically correct, version of the rhyme 'Ten Little Indians'). Can they work out who is the murderer before there is no one left alive?

This adaptation was originally broadcast in November 2010 and is a well realised production.

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Nick Smithson