Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse

Agatha Christie’s name is synonymous with mystery, but dabbled enough in supernatural fiction to fill a recent anthology, The Last Séance. Some of the stories are arguably shoe-horned in, like “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb,” wherein Hercule Poirot provides the Scooby-Doo explanation for an ancient curse. Probably the best story, “S.O.S” involves intuition and sensitivity more than the outright uncanny, but the title story would definitely work as a Twilight Zone episode. It is therefore maybe not so strange Sarah Phelps emphasizes the supernatural elements of Christie’s source novel in her two-part adaptation of The Pale Horse, directed by Leonora Lonsdale, which premieres this Friday on Amazon Prime.

Mark Easterbrook still loves his first wife Delphine, but she is dead and his second marriage to Hermia practically is too. He was seeing the young and tarty Thomasina Tuckerton on the side, until she died rather suddenly—so suddenly, he had to make a stealthy exit from her flat. It turns out, her name was on a list that turned up in the shoe of a dead woman. Most those names correspond to a recently deceased body. Rather ominously, Easterbrook’s name is also on the list, but his is followed by a question mark.

To figure out if his life really is in danger, Easterbrook follows a trail of clues to the quaint village of Much Deeping, where a trio of fortune tellers have set up shop in a former pub still known as “The Pale Horse.” They do not look so intimidating, but there are rumors they wield dark magic to make their clients’ enemies disappear—for a price, of course.

It is weird how the BBC keeps taking wild liberties with this Christie novel. A few years ago, the Miss Marple franchise drained out most of the occult elements and added Jane Marple to what was a rare stand-alone non-series mystery from Dame Agatha. Now, Phelps swings the pendulum all the way back, pumping up the paranormal and a devising a head-trippily ambiguous but most likely supernatural conclusion.

Rewriting Agatha Christie is risky business that doesn’t always work in Pale Horse, but the sheer boldness of the final twist earns grudging respect for Chutzpah. Yet, Phelps’ Pale Horse really works as well as it does mostly because of Rufus Sewell’s brooding, tightly-wound performance as Easterbrook. Sewell’s specialty is portraying compromised characters with corrupting secrets, so he really is perfectly cast, in a darkly dapper kind of way. (Sewell was absolutely terrific in Rock & Roll on Broadway and the short-lived Zen. He really ought to be a much bigger star, but he is always reliable.)

I’ll Follow You Down: Canadian Time Travel

As a family of academics, it is not surprising the Whytes are prone to depression and dysfunctional insecurities. At least they have a good reason. While still a young boy, Erol’s father mysteriously vanishes while attending a theoretical physics conference. His absence continues to haunt Erol and his mother, but the son might be able to fix his broken family by reconstructing his father’s time travel research in Richie Mehta’s I’ll Follow You Down (trailer here), which opens this Friday in the Tri-State Area.

Gabe Whyte’s luggage remained in his Princeton hotel room, but no trace could be found of the Toronto scholar. His wife Marika never really recovered from the loss. Arguably though, some good came out of the misfortune, from Erol’s perspective. While his mother was away searching for his father, the young boy forged a deep bond with Grace, his childhood sweetheart. In fact, they are poised to get married after their undergrad studies, until his mother finally succumbs to her depression.

As he mourns his mother, Whyte starts to reconsider his Grandpa Sal’s crazy claims. The good professor is convinced Gabe developed a method of time travel, journeying through a wormhole to have a discussion with Einstein, presumably meeting with misadventure somewhere along the way. However, it will take more than a garden variety genius like Prof. Gramps to replicate his work. Only an exceptional mind like Erol’s is equal to the task. The upside for his family will be profound if Whyte can save his father, but what will happen to his relationship with Grace?

Follow definitely has its cerebral side, which is a good thing, but it is also unusually emotionally mature for science fiction. Instead of speculating about the Butterfly Effect and how it might alter macro history and technology, Mehta focuses on how it could transform the Whyte family. As a result, it is not nearly as intricately constructed and gleefully mind-blowing as Nacho Vigalondo’s Timecrimes or Hugh Sullivan’s The Infinite Man, but its time shifting business still holds together pretty well.

As a misfit genius, The Sixth Sense’s Haley Joel Osment makes a convincing misfit. The genius part requires a bit more willful suspension of disbelief. He more or less keeps his head above water, but it is far certain whether Follow will herald a major career comeback. Wisely, he is surrounding by a quality supporting cast with serious genre cred. Alias’s Victor Garber is on familiar turf as the decent mentoring grandfather, but he is still a reassuring presence. Rufus Sewell makes intelligence charismatic as the temporally misplaced Whyte, while The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson is surprisingly compelling as miserable mother Marika.

Like Infinite Man and Darren Paul Fisher’s Frequencies, Follow is the sort of cleverly conceived science fiction that does not require extensive special effects. A dose of Einstein (not a character) beats an explosion any day. Recommended with enthusiasm for time travel fans, I’ll Follow You Down opens this Friday (6/6) at the AMC Jersey Gardens in Elizabeth, via Well Go USA.

Restless: The Cold War for American Public Opinion

Who would benefit from keeping America out of the war in Europe?  It is a question that will preoccupy a former British secret agent all her life.  She was supposed to be set-up in a manner that would badly discredit the British intelligence community with the American public.  She was also supposed to be dead.  However, the Russian exile has more lives than a cat in the Sundance Channel’s two part mini-series adaption of William Boyd’s Restless (promo here), which kicks off this Friday night.

When professional Cambridge student Ruth Gilmartin pays a visit to her mother’s country home, she finds the woman in the throes of paranoia, or so she presumes.  Sally Gilmartin claims there are people watching the house from the surrounding tree-line.  It all has something to do with her service as a spy during WWII.  At the time, she went by her real name, Eva Delectorskya.  Initially, this is all too much for Gilmartin to accept, but the site of a shadowy figure in the woods gives her pause.  Reading her mother’s file, she gets the gist of the story viewers see in periodic flashbacks.

A former Russian aristocrat, Delectorskya is recruited by British intelligence in France after her brother is murdered by Fascist thugs.  Lucas Romer will be her handler.  Although he is not inclined towards any sort of emotional involvement, sparks will eventually fly between them.  Delectorskya turns out to be a natural agent, but her missions are often rather dodgy.  Yet, somehow disaster always turns into success, at least within the agency bureaucracy.

Transferring to New York, they both assume roles at a dubious wire service that specializes in releasing disinformation to mislead the Germans.  From time to time, a little field work is required to plant an especially sensitive story.  Delectorskya assumed that was all she was doing when she accepts her fateful assignment to Albuquerque.  Unfortunately, she soon discovers someone at the agency sold her out.  The consequences of that ill-fated mission will linger for decades.

What more can you ask of a miniseries that gives you Charlotte Rampling buying a shotgun?  She plays Delectorskya/Gilmartin like the strong, intelligent woman she would have to be.  Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery also looks the part of her daughter, but her shocked incredulity goes on far too long.  In fact, the first installment does not lack for exposition, but the second part pays off with interest.

When the elements are all in place, Restless becomes quite a rich feast of skullduggery, helmed with a fair degree of style by Edward Hall.  As young and old Romer respectively, Rufus Sewell and Michael Gambon might not exactly be the spitting image of each other, but they are definitely at home with the murky intrigue.  A strong ensemble from top to bottom, character actor Adrian Scarborough makes a particularly strong impression as Delectorskya’s ally, Morris Devereux.  However, as the resilient young Delectorskya, Hayley Atwell is a bit pedestrian, lacking the Mata Hari allure one would expect from her.  Still, she becomes Charlotte Rampling, which is something.

While Boyd’s screen adaptation of his own novel is smart and tense down the stretch, his nondescript title never seems particular apt, but no matter.   Restless is a quality period production long on atmosphere that should satisfy for regular viewers of Masterpiece Mystery and BBC America’s mystery-thrillers. Recommended for fans of British television and espionage junkies, Restless begins this Friday (12/7) on the Sundance Channel and concludes one week later (12/14).

Zen and the Art of Police Corruption

Aurelio Zen has a reputation for integrity. As a result, his career has stalled. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the higher-ups sometimes need a police detective of his intelligence and talent to handle especially sensitive cases. To survive, he will reluctantly learn how to play the political game in Zen, Masterpiece Mystery’s newest series based on the novels by Michael Dibdin, which premieres this coming Sunday on PBS.

Zen might just have the coolest opening credits ever. They certainly establish the Rome setting. However, Zen is Venetian—another reason the detective is such an outsider in the Roman force. In the series opening Vendetta, Zen is to vet the handling of a high profile murder case. His captain makes it clear Zen is supposed to sign off on the half-bungled investigation quickly and quietly. It will not be that easy. Amedeo Colonna, a powerful ministry official unofficially “requests” Zen sabotage the case against the politically connected suspect. Further complicating matters, Zen starts to think the accused might actually be innocent. Yet, whatever course of action Zen chooses, his career will likely suffer. This predicament will repeat for Zen.

Though Zen spends most of season one on thin ice professionally, his personal life heats with the arrival of the captain’s new civilian secretary, Tania Moretti, a beautiful woman going through an ugly divorce. In this gossipy backbiting environment, they try to keep their relationship on the down low. It is not clear how long this will be sustainable though now that Zen is increasingly assigned high profile cases. The second installment, Cabal, starts with an apparently open and shut suicide that Zen’s captain would like him to hurry up and close. This time the Ministry agrees, but prosecutor (and potential lover) Nadia Pirlo encourages Zen to keep digging.

Arguably the weakest link of season one, Cabal posits a shadowy uber-conspiracy in the tired Da Vinci Code tradition, right down to the furtive cell phones calls exchanged by limousine riding government officials and ominous Vatican Cardinals. Frankly, raising the intrigue to the macro level undercuts the series’ gritty portrayal of petty precinct politics and the grasping corruption of the officialdom above them.

The series concluding Ratking returns to its strengths, placing Zen in yet another Catch-22. Evidently, it is illegal to pay ransom to kidnappers in Italy. Nonetheless, Colonna wants Zen to facilitate such an exchange to ensure the safe return of a major party contributor. Unfortunately, Zen’s by-the-book interim captain is itching to bust him for any infraction. It would be business as usual for Zen, if he were not so aware a man’s life hangs in the balance.

Ratking might have the best twisty-turny crime store of the series. Not exactly whodunits or procedurals, Zen the series is more about watching the protagonist try to carry out his duties honorably, while negotiating the malevolent bureaucracy and petty departmental in-fighting.

Perfectly cast in the lead, ethnically ambiguous Rufus Sewell certainly passes for Italian. He also conveys the appropriate combination of righteous intensity and everyman resignation. Furthermore, the chemistry forged between his Zen and Caterina Murino’s Moretti is nothing short of electric. Frankly, even though it is always safely PG, Zen is still pretty darn hot by PBS standards.

Seen by a handful in the unfairly dismissed Garden of Eden and by the entire world in Casino Royale, Murino projects a smart and sophisticated sexuality, not unlike some of her legendary predecessors of Italian cinema. The supporting cast (partly Italian, but mostly British) provides plenty of color and verve, particularly Ben Miles as the stone cold Mephistophelean Colonna.

At one point Colonna tells Zen: “I didn’t know you had it in you.” Some might echo the sentiment after watching Zen on PBS. Sleek and stylish like an Italian sports car, but decidedly grubby in its depiction of police corruption, Zen is feature quality television. While Cabal need not be appointment TV, Vendetta and Ratking absolutely should not be missed. Unfortunately, Zen the series' future is somewhat up in the air in the UK right now, but viewers should not let that dissuade them. Even though most Zen’s personal life remains unsolved at the end of series one, it allows him to enjoy some temporarily last laughs that are well worth sticking around for. Definitely recommended, Zen debuts on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery with Vendetta this Sunday (7/17).

(Photos: WGBH)