BBC, Amazon mount Christie’s Pale Horse

UK pubcaster BBC1 has ordered its latest adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel, this time reworking The Pale Horse for TV with Amazon Prime in the US.

Sarah Phelps

The two-parter is being produced by UK-based Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Ltd (ACL), with Sarah Phelps again on board to write.

Leonora Lonsdale (Beast) directs and Ado Yoshizaki Cassuto (City of Tiny Lights) is attached to produce. Phelps is exec producing alongside Damien Timmer and Helen Ziegler for Mammoth Screen, James Prichard and Basi Akpabio for ACL, and Tommy Bulfin for the BBC.

Amazon Prime Video is the US coproduction partner and Endeavor Content will handle sales internationally. Casting is yet to be announced.

The show continues BBC1 and ACL’s unique production deal, which has seen Mammoth, ACL and Phelps previously work on Christie adaptations including The ABC Murders, Ordeal by Innocence, And Then There Were None and The Witness for the Prosecution.

The Pale Horse was first published in 1961 and revolves around the work of a trio of supposed witches, exploring why a list of names was found in the shoe of a dead woman with one of those named investigating.

Phelps described plot as “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.”