The Pale Horse

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.

First part was promising something very good but then part two.. I am quite unsatisfied by the ending.

An unpleasant man does unpleasant things to his unpleasant friends and unpleasant acquaintances, who do unpleasant things back to him, possibly for all eternity.

There is no doubt an audience for this very classy, well-made and well-acted soap opera, consisting of people who think the world unpleasant and like to have their noses rubbed in it. There are such people, and they deserve to be entertained as much as the rest of us do.

However, viewers should be aware that, though it borrows Agatha Christie's title, her characters, and several plot elements, this bears no more than a superficial resemblance to Christie's novel, but free-rides on Christie's reputation, presumably in order to boost its viewing figures. I can think of no other reason for it to pose as a Christie adaptation.

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

Once again Phelps thinks she knows better than Dame Agatha Christie, if she feels the need to re-write her plots just remove Christie's name from the title. As others have said it's creepy and attractive to look at, but go past the visuals and you'll find pretty poor story telling. I had expected Death comes as the end to be the next production, that would have been interesting as it has never been made for television. This is one of Christie's later books, it has a chilling core, I fear that in each of the Television adaptations, that grit has been missed. It's better than the dreadful mash up of The ABC Murders from last year.