THIS WEEK’S CHOICE
The Pale Horse is the latest Agatha Christie story to be adapted for BBC One by Baftanominated writer Sarah Phelps, and features a stellar cast...
Rufus Sewell plays Mark Easterbrook. He is joined by Kaya Scodelario as Hermia, Bertie Carvel as Zachariah Osborne, Sean Pertwee as Detective Inspector Lejeune, Henry LloydHughes as David Ardingly, Poppy
Gilbert as Thomasina Tuckerton, Madeleine Bowyer as Jessie Davis, and Ellen Robertson as Poppy.
London, 1961. Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell) has everything a man could dream of – he’s rich, successful and popular, with a beautiful new wife (Kaya Scodelario) and perfect home. But scratch beneath the surface and he’s still griefstricken by the loss of his first wife Delphine (Georgina Campbell). When Mark’s name is discovered on a piece of paper in a dead woman’s shoe, everything starts to fall apart for him.
Why did Jessie Davies (Madeleine Bowyer) die, why is Mark’s name on a piece of paper in her shoe, and who are the other names on the list? Detective Inspector Lejeune (Sean Pertwee) interviews Mark and mentions that the names Tuckerton and Ardingly were also on the list. Mark has a connection with Thomasina Tuckerton and David Ardingly – and Thomasina is also dead…
As Mark tries to work out why he is on the list and what it means, everything seems to lead back to the village of Much Deeping, which seems to be an idyllic English village, but it is also a place of old traditions and strange beliefs, a place of witches, curses and spells.
“Written in 1961, against the backdrop of the Eichmann Trial, the escalation of the Cold War and Vietnam, The Pale Horse is a shivery, paranoid story about superstition, love gone wrong, guilt and grief. It’s about what we’re capable of when we’re desperate and what we believe when all the lights go out and we’re alone in the dark.”
“It’s like reading something that’s a cross between An Education, The Wicker Man and Jacob’s Ladder. There’s an element to this story that is really quite surprising. It reminded me of a phrase Hitchcock once made about one of his film scripts: “It’s a nice, nasty little piece.”