The Pale Horse is a good clever story if not among Agatha Christie's best. This 1997 adaptation of it is not a good adaptation of it at all and is disappointing on its own too. There are definitely far worse adaptations of Christie's books around(ie. Austin Trevor's Lord Edgware Dies, Alfred Molina's Murder on the Orient Express, 1989's Ten Little Indians, The Alphabet Murders and Geraldine McEwan's At Bertram's Hotel and Sittaford Mystery). But you can also do with far better as well(ie. the Russian version of And Then There Were None, Witness for the Prosecution, 1945's And Then There Were None, 1974's Murder on the Orient Express, Peter Ustinov's Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun and all of the Joan Hickson and David Suchet adaptations).Any redeeming merits? Yes there are, even with anything I don't like there are actually not that many times where I have found no redeeming qualities in that regard. And that is the case with the Agatha Christie adaptations I didn't like either, though Trevor's Lord Edgware Dies and McEwan's At Bertram's Hotel came close. The Pale Horse does look good, the scenery, costumes and photography are very nicely done and give the adaptation a look that is both glossy and atmospheric. The acting is very good too, Colin Buchanan and Andy Serkis are very engaging, but I agree that Leslie Phillips and Michael Byrne give the best performances. The former roguish but interestingly with a plummy-rich voice that you don't hear a lot, and the latter terrifying in his arrogance and condescension. Jayne Ashborne is indeed lovely, but also for me compared to everybody else a little bland. The first 15 minutes were also entertaining and drew you right in.Much doesn't work though. The music does not fit at all, it tries to be authentic to the setting that the story was originally set in, but it was such a shame that the setting that this adaptation adopted didn't follow suit. As a consequence, the effect was jarring and it even felt somewhat dreary. The dialogue is awkward and stilted often, is confused, jumps around a lot and very little is given developing the characters and story. The characters are just not interesting either, there are too few of them which really undermines the effectiveness of the final solution, as a result the ending(always a highlight with Agatha Christie) was flat. It was the story that fared the worst, to put it kindly it was a mess. It was convoluted to the point that it was either really implausible or/and very difficult to tell what was going on sometimes, it felt incomplete and like it was skipping over important plot points and characters. It was also very dull, Christie's books are deliberately paced but always engrossing but this adaptation's sprawling nature, drawn out scenes and little development in all honesty made the adaptation a chore to sit through. Something I didn't get from the promising first 15 minutes, and not since McEwan's Sittaford Mystery has an Agatha Christie adaptation made me feel as strongly as that. On top of that, the Macbeth-like witch scenes were clumsily shoe-horned in, and came across as melodramatic and just plain silly.Overall, love Agatha Christie, didn't care for this outside of the production values and cast. 5/10 Bethany Cox

This would have been better without some completely pointless changes brought in to the plot. At the start there is a completely implausible attempt to suggest that Mark is suspected of being the killer. Nothing in the show suggests the police would suspect him in this way and the plot line dies quietly, having wasted a fair amount of time. Most of the performances are adequate at worst but the dialogue is often poor. One of the things which made the book successful was the way it at least played with the idea of the supernatural. No one could be fooled by the witches here. Agatha Christie was usually luckier than this in her adaptors for the screen.

Taken from the 1961 novel of the same name, this Anglia TV rendition of The Pale Horse was filmed in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Oxon, and London. Notable differences from the novel are the absence of Ariadne Oliver and some of the other characters from the book.The story concerns young sculptor Mark Easterbrook (Colin Buchanan) who discovers a priest dying from a head wound-the man gives Mark a list of names before he dies. The police don't exactly believe Mark's story, even to the point where they suspect him in the priest's death, but Mark determines to follow up the list-which leads to other murders before he finally solves it with the aid of Kate Mercer (Jayne Ashbourne), a friend of one of the victims.The Pale Horse is nothing superlative, rather more like average, and the two young leads are somewhat bland. The good things about this production are the photography, and very fine performances from Sir Leslie Phillips and Michael Byrne-that alone makes it worth watching. Martin Kennedy is also quite good in the small part of Tate, a tough henchman. Jean Marsh plays one of the three witches who reside at the house known as The Pale Horse.

Agatha Christie's "The Pale Horse" is not one of my favorite Christie books. There is no Poirot or Miss Marple to liven things up, and the witchcraft motif seems contrived.The film of the same name is a 1997 British TV production, loosely based on Christie's novel. I wasn't expecting much from this film, and not much was what I got. The film's confusing plot meanders around, seemingly without direction. There are too few suspects. And the ending is a letdown, and potentially unclear for anyone not familiar with the book.On the other hand, the acting is OK, though a bit hammy at times. And the film has good production design.Overall, this film is not terribly bad. But it's not particularly good either. There are other Agatha Christie movies out there that are so much better. If these films were in competition with each other, most of them would leave "The Pale Horse" at the starting gate.