The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

In a way I’m glad Agatha’s story has been dismembered and re-worked, since having watched episode one on catch up I then got the book on my Kindle and devoured it!
So there will probably still be some surprises when we catch up with episode 2 tonight.

Might add that 2 teen nieces, staying with us for half term, adored it.

Not you her

younger

I think there are gremlins in the system

Does wotsername think she will appeal to you her viewers with this kind of adaptation?

It so, I doubt it because most younger people I know either watch Netflix or no TV at all.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered

Glad it's not just DH and me.

I’ve just watched it and am bewildered!

Greenfinch
?

I am glad I slept through it. Found it totally boring as well as everything else.

Well, it was all very strange! I was rather mystified about what was going on. At the end, was Easterbrook dead, dreaming, or what?

Because nobody would watch it if it hadn't got Agatha Christie in the title. These adaptors hang on the coat tales of the famous to get an audience. Parasitical, really.

I too am totally confused after watching last nights final episode. Were we supposed to be left confused? I don't really get these modern adaptions where the original story is completely ripped apart and re-assembled to be nothing like the original. Why don't they write there own story?

rubysong I think dropped shoulders have always been a feature of fair isle garments and she was a witch so probably not up to date with '60s fashion.
I was right about this complete hokum but watchable. Although the ending was unfathomable. Was he in hell?

I would imagine an expensive production with good actors wasting their talents on a ridiculous story only given prominence because the author utilised Agatha Christie's fame.
There was an article about Sarah Phelps in the Daily Telegraph, probably three weeks ago.

I was got a bit last in the first part and completely lost in the second. Mr B is going to watch it all again to see if he can understand it a bit more but it won't be while I am at home.

I think he had "gone to hell" in the end....or I had??

I enjoyed the first episode but last night’s episode completely confused me. I’m obviously not ‘arty’ enough to appreciate things like that. The only thing I gathered from last night’s episode was the identity of the murderer. I didn’t read the original but it didn’t help one bit. At least I have Last Tango In Halifax and Line Of Duty to look forward to.

I have read the original, but the adaptation is so different that I am still no wiser about the ending of it. I mean the very last bit - the murderer and the revelation (no pun intended!) of how it all happened is the same, if memory serves.

The Pale Horse is not a Miss Marple story. The narrator is called Mark Easterbrook, but that is all the character in the book and tv character have in common.

It is a very good and rather creepy story on its own account, without any messing about and the denouement and who the murderer actually is comes as a big surprise as does the very clever way the murders are carried out.

I came to it through R4 who dramatised it 5 years ago or more. A good straight adaptation. As a result I downloaded the book onto my kindle and read it.

Download it and read it and then report back.

In this adaptation Agatha Christie was the victim and Sarah Phelps the murderess.
There is a version of this tale with Miss Marple on the ITV players with Julia McKenzie, although not sure this was originally a Marple story.

How about a poor family living in a dockyard slum? The father a exploited Philipino seaman, away 11 months of the year and earning a pittance. The 4 children have no toys and scavenge on the forshore, making up games using the bits of wood they find there to build a boat of sorts, but then an expensive yacht moors nearby and the two pampered children on board laugh at the poor children and destroy the pretend boat. The children go for a long walk and find a body on the mud. It is their father who had discovered the yacht owner was a drug smuggler and had been killed and thrown overboard

Swallows and Amazons.

Any more people with ideas? we could submit them to Sarah Phelps and the BBC and perhaps get to meet Rufus Sewell!

I took it that it was his conscience taking him over. And that the witches didn’t have the powers after all. Or did they....?!

Nope, I didn't understand the ending either! Anyone who did, could you please explain it!

I think it helped not knowing the book. Taking it as a completely different tale. I suppose though that there would then have been cries of plagiarism.

Will read the book.

I just didnt understand the ending.

I'm going to write a drama set in a poorly performing comprehensive school in the inner city. Most of the girls will be from chaotic homes, the head teacher will be a drug addict having an affair with her supplier and the main character will be a teenage mother who's murdered her brother. I'm sure you all recognise my adaptation of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers

Oh, and I'm another who got completely lost .

Spoiler alert if you haven't seen it yet - scroll down if you have seen it and understood the ending:





Was it all a dream that Mark was doomed to keep reliving?