Un cavallo per la strega

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.

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.

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.

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

I was really enjoying this until the very end. I didn't understand the ending and even reading the BBC's dissection on what it all meant left me none the wiser. I feel as if I wasted valuable TV time :-(