Das fahle Pferd

Sigh. The screenwriter simply doesn't understand Agatha Christie and she's murdering the originals. The Pale Horse, The ABC Murders, Witness for the Prosecution, And Then There Were None - they all miss the point completely.

You know who understood Christie perfectly? Rian Johnson. His "Knives Out" is exactly like an Agatha Christie novel. He even captured the essence of Poirot, something Murder on the Orient Express could not. See, Poirot is not about the fact that he's Belgian, or bald or has a mustache. It's that the others perceive him as weird, and pompous, and even clueless, things Daniel Craig & Rian Johnson understood perfectly.

Agatha Christie was never gross. She was never obvious. She was witty, clever and cultivated. Her social commentary is subtle. She knew how to allude without shouting it. She knew how to misled, how to create an atmosphere. She could make you suspect everyone and noone at the same time.

Sarah Phelps' adaptations are like crayon copies of Renaissance paintings. You may recognize the subject but it'll never leave a lasting impression.

This Sarah Phelps (am not British and know nothing of her work) seems to have aroused passionate criticism for her seemingly wholesale changes to the revered Agatha Christie's work. If the accusations are correct and further reading seems to make that a fact then it seems rather pointless in even describing The Pale Horse (the TV serialisation) as based on Christie's novel. At no stage did this production feel like a Christie who-dunnit. The so-called three witches felt completely contrived from start to finish. And the ending? Well, there will be no use of spoilers here because this Phelps' yarn has none. Take your pick from a few guesses! I fully agree with one review here which suggested the Christie estate should take legal proceedings against Sarah Phelps whose butchering of plot and character make this the worst Christie adaptation ever produced. So disgusting that a rating is inappropriate.

There seems to be a need these days to take classic works by the likes of Bram Stoker and in this instance, Agatha Christie and re-write them. Or to put it another way, in my opinion, "stuff them up".

For me, the maxim "if it ain't broke don't fix it" applies and The Pale Horse is no exception. To start with you have a male hero, who can't be a hero, without first being a villain. The original hero of the piece is re-written as a scoundrel and a womaniser. Why this is the case I can only guess at but its a lame ploy.

The rest of the story fares little better, skewing the tale away from an intriguing murder mystery, towards a rather jaded tale of sexual infidelity and secrets.

On the plus side the acting is decent and the visuals are creepily eerie. That said, once again, the price of tinkering with something that works just fine is an off balance tale, that fails to resonate.

5/10.

The ending killed it. It was a good and enjoyable plot until it stoped making sense towards the end.

Engrossing and entertaining with an excellent cast and suspenseful storytelling ... until the last fifteen-to-twenty-minutes or so, when it unravels so much that it undoes everything that came before it.