Writer defends her alteration of Agatha Christie stories for TV
THE screenwriter behind five of the BBC’S latest Agatha Christie adaptations has said her controversial scripts are the stories that the crime author wanted to tell.
Sarah Phelps’s reworking of The Pale Horse is due to be aired next month and while it is loosely based on Christie’s 1961 novel of the same name, she has made some major changes.
Viewers will find the main character, Mark Easterbrook, a widowed antique dealer, is no longer the hero of the tale, as he was in the book, but a liar and a womaniser who has an affair with an heiress working as a showgirl.
Phelps previously upset diehard Christie fans by changing the identity of the killer in Ordeal by Innocence, drawing parallels between the Brexit movement and Thirties fascism in The ABC Murders, and adding sex and foul language to And Then There Were None and Witness for the Prosecution.
But Phelps said Christie had laid clues to these darker themes in her writing. “With somebody as famous as Agatha Christie, as globally read, you kind of lose sight of the fact there was a brain behind this,” she said. “Of course I’ve taken liberties. Have I changed loads of stuff? Yeah, of course I have. Loads and loads and loads of stuff, otherwise you’d have 30 hours of TV and would you want to watch it? No.
“But I always go for the beating heart of what she’s getting at and she always throws you little clues; little quantum details. Those are the things I latch on to because that’s what I think the story is about from her point of view.”
The Pale Horse, screened over two episodes, begins on BBC One on Feb 9.