Critic Reviews

Seven Dials sits comfortably in that upper tier. It pulls off the difficult trick of making something feel both nimble and reassuringly familiar – a period caper that glides through gilded country piles and shadowy streets.

This kind of story needs a heroine who's both charming enough to carry the action, and believable as someone whom no one expects to be good at detective work. Fortunately, McKenna-Bruce is slyly funny and cool in the lead role.

Seven Dials delivers an engaging drama that stays mostly faithful to its source material.

Here, the journey isn’t necessarily thrilling, nor is it as intellectually adroit as peak Sherlock, but it’s lively and easygoing entertainment. And for most viewers, Mia McKenna-Bruce will be a most agreeable discovery.

McKenna-Bruce is delightful as the pint-sized self-proclaimed detective determined to do whatever is possible to find out what happened to her friend. A few of the clues unveiled in “Seven Dials” are more obvious than others, but there are just enough surprises to make the series worthwhile.

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials is a well-paced, traditional Christie adaptation with a fun-to-watch young protagonist at its center, which is rare in the world of the classic mystery novelist’s stories.

Very British, and once the threads start connecting, pretty good.

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials is quintessentially cosy entertainment, but its broader function is providing a breakout role for Mia McKenna-Bruce, who’s quite brilliant in it.

Their back-and-forth gives the series the pluck it lacks elsewhere. Should there should be a second season of “Seven Dials, it would be best to dial up more of that Bundle-Battle repartee and formulate a better, more convincing mystery that’s not overly reliant on coincidences and preposterous.

It is a handsome distraction from ugly things happening around the world but I still hanker for a Marple or a Poirot.