The Pale Horse - Season 1

At the core of this corny and convoluted adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel lies a run-of-the-mill whodunit, an almost humdrum tale of bad blood and fiendish killing.

For all its spills and thrills and delightful cameo performances, I felt distracted and a little bored.

The unsettling atmosphere carried more than a whiff of Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man.

Rita Tushingham looks so terrifying as witch Bella, she only needs a spear and a hourglass to resemble a medieval Vanitas, and Sheila Atim has perfected a threatening glare.

I love watching [Rufus] Sewell, and I could happily stare at his expensive gentleman's washbag of a face expressing amused disdain at things for hours.

In the end [Sarah] Phelps has to butcher the plot and the characters to come up with something more lively and interesting, but it doesn't really work.

You will need a scrubdown yourself by the end of the opening hour.

The only argument I'll grant the reactionaries is the following: with fresh writing and production this bloody good, why the need for an adaptation, for a "source author", atall: other than to let the broadcaster sell it as "Agatha Christie's Pale Horse"?

Phelps' period mystery thrillers are glamorous, twisted delights peopled by glamorous, twisted characters. That's no different here.

The Pale Horse (2020) has some relics of Agatha Christie in there somewhere, and when it's not being teeteringly ludicrous it makes a perfectly serviceable murder mystery with a frisson of the supernatural.

More of the psycho in the brown Open All Hours coat, and less of the hocus pocus, would have made this a much better murder mystery.

There are elements to like. Sewell, and his cheekbones, are excellent. Plus, he can do piercing looks of the sort that pin you to the wall. And also subsidiary characters are given some heft.