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Sarah Phelps on new BBC Agatha Christie adaptation: : 'Have I changed loads of stuff? Of course I have'

Rufus Sewell stars in BBC One's new Agatha Christie adaptation The Pale Horse - WARNING: Use of this copyright image is subject to the terms of use of BBC Pictures' Digital Picture
Rufus Sewell stars in BBC One's new Agatha Christie adaptation The Pale Horse - WARNING: Use of this copyright image is subject to the terms of use of BBC Pictures' Digital Picture

The screenwriter adapting Agatha Christie’s novels for the BBC has said her controversial rewrites are the stories that the crime author wanted to tell.

Sarah Phelps’s latest adaptation, The Pale Horse, comes to television next month. It is loosely based on Christie’s 1961 novel of the same name but Phelps has made major changes to the plot and characters.

The main character, Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell) has been turned into a liar and womaniser. In the book, Easterbrook witnesses a fight in a cafe involving a flighty heiress who soon meets her death. In the BBC One version, the heiress is working as a showgirl and is Easterbrook’s mistress.

Rufus Sewell and Kaya Scodelario in a scene from The Pale Horse - Credit: Ben Blackall
Rufus Sewell and Kaya Scodelario in a scene from The Pale Horse Credit: Ben Blackall

Phelps previously upset diehard Christie fans by changing the identity of the killer in Ordeal by Innocence, drawing parallels between the Brexit movement and 1930s fascism in The ABC Murders, and adding sex and swearing 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.

“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.

Rita Tushingham, Sheila Atim and Kathy Kiera Clarke in The Pale Horse - Credit: Jonny Birch
Rita Tushingham, Sheila Atim and Kathy Kiera Clarke in The Pale Horse Credit: Jonny Birch

“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,” Phelps said.

“There’s a kind of tension [for Christie]: ‘Here’s a book that people want to read and here’s the book I want to write.’”

She suggested that Christie may have been too busy churning out thrillers to produce the stories she really wanted to tell. “She was incredibly popular, she worked incredibly fast, and every now and again you can feel [her saying], ‘I’ve got to get this finished, I’ve got to hit a deadline.”

The Pale Horse begins on BBC One on February 9