Codswallop notwithstanding, Gayle tunes in to see The Masked Singer final, and is left perplexed as The Pale Horse gallops off…
Yes, I caved in. I watched the final of The Masked Singer.
This doesn’t mean I became a fan of the bizarre reality show. In fact, I’d have no qualms about stating that it was a load of codswallop.
So many things about it annoyed me – presenter Joel Dommett’s cheesy grin, the judges’ over-the-top enthusiasm, and the way the baying crowd chanted “take it off, take it off” before the becostumed figures were unmasked.
But having watched the semi-final, I of course had to stick with this tripe and see it through to the final.
After Queen Bee was declared the winner, she was unveiled as former Girls Aloud popstar Nicola Roberts. Quelle surprise!
Fans were on tentacle-hooks to discover the identity of Octopus – who took third place in the contest – but many had already guessed it would be Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins.
Hedgehog had many folk fooled, though. I myself was fairly sure he was Michael Ball, so what a shock I got to discover he was in fact comedian Jason Manford. Who knew he possessed such a wonderful voice!
Masked singers and general weirdness aside, I found myself glued to BBC One on Sunday night watching something of a darker nature – the final episode of an Agatha Christie adaptation of The Pale Horse.
Starring dishy Rufus Sewell as wealthy antiques dealer Mark Easterbrook, a man who discovers his name on a list found in a dead woman’s shoe, he fears his own life may be at risk. That’s because all the other names are of people either already dead, or marked for imminent death,
He starts investigating, initially suspecting three witches as the killers, but ultimately discovering the culprit to be pharmacist Zachary Osborne.
Posing as a workman, Osborne has been visiting victims at home and planting poison or slipping it into their drinks and food. This makes the deaths look like they’re from natural causes, and no suspicions are aroused.
As the two-parter comes to a close, there’s a tense scene in which the two men square up to one another.
Osborne hurls insults at Easterbrook – “you shiny-shoed ponce…you gutless wincing turd” – which incite rage in our hero, and spur him on to kill the whining, dodgy-toothed creep with an iron bar.
Thereafter, things get very confusing. Easterbrook picks up a newspaper with a headline about his death. Er, hang on a minute? Is he now a ghost? Or has he been poisoned by Osborne and is seeing his own death plotted in the future?
The scene switches to a flashback of Easterbrook killing his first wife Delphine in a fit of jealousy (he chucked her radio into the bath).
Perhaps the witches cursed him and he’s consigned to an after-life in limbo where he repeatedly kills Delphine? Who knows!
Whatever the outcome, it left me – and surely many others – utterly perplexed.
The Pale Horse made for absolutely compelling viewing.
