The Pale Horse: What the Must Watch reviewers think
Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows alongside 5 Live presenter Nihal Arthanayake.
This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan share their thoughts on The Pale Horse, BBC One's two-part Agatha Christie mystery. When a young woman is murdered, a mysterious list of names is discovered. Who wrote the list, and what does it mean?
Part one is available now on iPlayer, part two is on Sunday 16 February on BBC One.
Have you watched it? What did you think? Leave your comments below...
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(Photo: Mammoth Screen 2019/Ben Blackall)
Hayley says: "It’s an Agatha Christie murder mystery with added witches and strangeness"
"[Sarah Phelps] always takes apart the Christie novels and puts them back together in a way that sometimes makes Christie fans on Twitter shout “This is not correct!” but it always makes so much sense as a show.
"This one is particularly weird, because it's one of Christie's novels that she wrote in kind of a Dennis Wheatley style: it's an occult-ish story, it's very Wicker Man-ish.
“It is so suspenseful you don’t want to wait a week [for part two], you want it now.
"I really liked it. It’s an Agatha Christie murder mystery with added witches and strangeness... I was really into it."
(Photo: Mammoth Screen 2019/James Pardon)
Scott says: "I loved it - the only frustration is with the scheduling"
"I think every Sarah Phelps adaptation has been great - she did ‘And Then There Were None’ and ‘The ABC Murders’ as well. And she also had the Dublin Murders just before Christmas.
“With Agatha Christie... the story is always trying to crack a logical case. Yet this one is all seemingly controlled by witches. You know that it’s logical, someone is behind it and it’s got to be cracked by Mark, played by Rufus Sewell. And so of course at the end of it you’re always going to find out who was behind those murders.
“I think the only frustration with this is the scheduling. They would always put [something like] this on around after Christmas, because it’s the darkest show the BBC can do after the Christmas period but instead they did the six-part adaptation of The Profumo Affair that wasn’t very good.
"What they did with that one is put it on successive nights and this has been stretched out – even though it’s only a two parter – on successive Sundays.
“Yes, I am very much for Must Watch on this.”
(Photo: Mischief Screen Limited 2019/Ben Blackall)
Part one of The Pale Horse is available now on BBC iPlayer.
Must Watch is available as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds, or through your podcast app.
In this week's episode the team also review Locke & Key on Netflix and Visible: Out on Television on Apple TV+. Plus they are joined by Denise Van Outen from The Masked Singer.
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