Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Rufus Sewell, Sean Pertwee, Kaya Scodelario, Bertie Carvel, Georgina Campbell, Madeleine Bowyer, Poppy Gilbert, Claire Skinner, Rita Tushingham, James Fleet, Kathy Kiera Clarke, Sheila Atim, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Ellen Robertson, Sarah Woodward, Kim Chapman, Nicky Goldie, Christopher Bianchi, Elliot Francis, Sarah Jane, Jon Ramsbottom, Mark Schneider.
The supernatural plays no part in the pursuit of murder, or so the purists might have you believe, for in solving a mystery nothing can be forsaken in the reveal of the face of evil.
The inner workings of Agatha Christie’s mind is such that poison and revenge is deemed perfectly acceptable to the fans of means of murder, but to through in the possibility of the supernatural, even in adaption of her work, could be seen going too far, of not being part of the spirit in which the constant reader is assured of being the armchair detective whose mind is completely in tune with the writer’s thinking process.
In Sarah Phelps’ adaptation of The Pale Horse, murder is given that air of the paranormal, and suspecting freedom as the fearsome Ariadne Oliver is dispensed with and the culmination of the novel is given a distinctively unnerving feel; one in which Rufus Sewell and especially the great Bertie Carvel duel openly with words and tensions, and in which the art of deception is taken to a level where murder becomes art.
The point of retribution is that it finds a place to suggest forgiveness is possible, what The Pale Horse does is digest the crime and slap relentless torment to it, the idea that we can control death by speaking its name, by making a deal with a devil in which our enemies and obstacles are removed.
Unlike many other adaptations of the Queen of Crime’s life work, there is no sense of unlikely candidates that add subterfuge to the carnage of blood that follows, perhaps it is in this that Bertie Carvel’s oddly behaved character, Zachariah Osborne, stands out with such grand perverseness and displaying glee at the problem dangled persuasively before him, Rufus Sewell’s Mark Easterbrook and Sean Pertwee’s Inspector Lejeune.
It is in the darkness that this particular adaption lives and breathes, and for its value, it is a riveting story, the problem for many will be that there is no sense of consistency that they can cling too, instead they are asked to place their trust in the complexity of the supernatural, of the witch’s hex. For those that read past these signs though, The Pale Horse is a thoroughbred stallion which verges beautifully on the untameable, a ride in which death offers you its grandstand view.
Ian D. Hall