Photograph: Joe Duggan/BBC/Adorable Media
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a family gathered around a roaring yuletide screen must be in want of a ghost story. Since 1968, therefore (or a couple of years earlier, depending on whether you count the precursor Whistle and I’ll Come to You, directed by Jonathan Miller – and who am I to tell you nay?), the BBC has sporadically provided one in the form of the Ghost Story for Christmas series. These days, it is an annual event, delivered as a half-hour adaptation by Mark Gatiss of a spooky short story from the Victorian or Edwardian archives, which gives us some shivery distraction and provides some lovely actors with gainful employment of a not too onerous kind in the lead-up to Christmas.
To begin, the recent reboot of the series comprised mostly adaptations of Gatiss’s greatest love, MR James, but there has also, as befits the co-creator of Sherlock, been one by Arthur Conan Doyle (Lot No 249). Then, last year, it was derived from a tale by E Nesbit-yes-that-E-Nesbit from the days before she was pulling in royalties from The Railway Children, and the Psammead wasn’t even a glint in Edith’s eye.
