Reviewing the reviews of the Pale Horse
I am going “off piste” by, instead of starting with my own review of Sunday night dramatisation of Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse, I am examining the reviews thereof.
There is a reason for this: I did not get the final scene in which Mark Easterbrook, the suave amoral antique dealer brilliantly played by Rufus Sewell, reads of his death whilst still alive.
Deborah Ross – whose reviews have to many “I”s for my taste – observed that everything was closed off perfectly but Anita Singh in the Telegraph was not so sure.
Nor was I. I will have to re-watch.
I admired Sarah Phelps’ adaptation that played fast and loose with the original. I have no problem with that.
It was more Agatha Christie meets The Wicker Man with an atmosphere of creepy paganism embodied in the 3 witches of Much Keeping.
I have read virtually every Agatha Christie and know that the main plot is normally an artifice created by the murderer and she deftly leads you to suspect another, in this case Hermia the second wife of Easterbrook.
Phelps’ production of the ABC Murders cast John Malkovich as Poirot. It was brilliant casting again that put Rufus Sewell in the central role.
His suave persona covered insecurities over the reality of witchcraft which Bernie Clavel as the sinister shopkeeper played on.
Their first episode made me hanker for the second as in the week I tried to guess the murderer …and got it wrong.
In the final scene it was too clever for its own good. Was this a nightmare? As that great journalist John Junor might have said “I think we ought to know.”
No critic commented on a rare appearance by Rita Tushingham.
Born in Liverpool in 1942, she made her name in Shelagh Delaney’s Taste of Honey.
Here she played a cameo role as one of the witches.
There was diligent attention to sixties period detail, especially Easterbrook’s Aston Martin Lagonda.
As one now expects there was diversity too: one of the witches and Easterbrook’s first wife were black.
Notwithstanding the unsatisfactory final scene I am looking forward to Sarah Phelps’ next Christie adaptation.
