Yahoo News Why it took Gatiss 5 years to make another Christmas ghost story
It's been a little while since Mark Gatiss last delved into the eerie world of MR James, but the lack of a Christmas ghost story on the BBC since 2013's The Tractate Middoth isn't entirely down to the writer/director/actor/producer's busy schedule.
Instead, it's the lack of funding for half-hour TV movies, of the sort that aired under the Ghost Story for Christmas strand in the 1970s, that's prevented him from returning to the format... until now.
The Dead Room, airing on BBC Four on Christmas Eve (December 24), is a short, sharp and spooky tale about a pompous radio host (played by Simon Callow) whose past comes back to haunt him. It was filmed in just three days, and for, Gatiss says, "very little money".
[Sacha Dhawan in 2013’s The Tractate Middoth]
"I hope, having made it, that I can make some more, for the same money," he tells Digital Spy. "Because it works! And I just think it's a shame, because there obviously is a hunger for it every year.
"I mean, I would very happily make them all, till I drop, but it doesn't have to be me. I just seem to be the only person who keeps trying to bring them back!"
This particular tale was inspired by Gatiss' own tenure as presenter of BBC Radio 4 Extra's The Man in Black, an anthology horror series similar to the one hosted by Callow's character Aubrey Judd.
"The producer was always asking me to write for it," he explains. "I had an idea for a story called The Dead Room, about me as the Man in Black, in this studio that was being haunted. It never happened, but I sort of filed the idea away..."
The final product is not a direct adaptation but rather an affectionate tribute to the work of MR James, father of the modern ghost story who penned such classics as 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad', 'Casting the Runes' and, of course, 'The Tractate Middoth'.
Though an original narrative, The Dead Room strictly abides by all of James's rules on how a ghost story should be written – all except one. "The ghost should be malevolent and usually vengeful, you need a haze of distance [from the present day] and there should be no sex – though I broke that rule," Gatiss says.
The spectre in this tale is no headless horseman or Victorian spook, but a figure from the 1970s, a period that Gatiss says feels familiar but somehow "just out of reach" – and the social issues of the time are very much at the heart of The Dead Room.
The film's plot was "very much inflected" by Gatiss' previous work on the BBC Four series Queers, a series of monologues chronicling the experiences of LGBTQ+ figures throughout history, as well as the plights of Peter Wyngarde, a popular actor best known for playing the womanising Jason King who was arrested for "gross indecency" in 1975, and of Norman Scott, the subject of Russell T Davies' recent drama A Very English Scandal.
"The shadow of Norman Scott hangs over it, [the idea of] a vengeful lover," Gatiss says. "I thought, 'I'm not going to write about Aubrey as a 70-year-old married man with three children... why not make it a gay story? I'll write what i know'. That's very unusual, if not unique so far, in broadcast terms…
"And despite Monty James' rules, I thought it could have a hint of sex, without it being entirely about that. Really, it's a love story, and I think of the best ghost stories out there are."
If the BBC does come knocking next Christmas, Gatiss is enthused by the possibilities of what type of ghost story he might tackle next, naming "James's hero" J Sheridan Le Fanu and EF Benson as two more authors he's eager to adapt.
"What excites me a lot is honouring a tradition but pushing it forward," he says. "I mean, if someone asked me to adapt [James's 1904 short story] Count Magnus, set in 1890, I would absolutely do it.
"But also I'd be very happy to do Count Magnus set today, and see how that would work. Or another new story. Or some other people's stories... because there are a lot of them!"
The Dead Room airs on Christmas Eve (Monday, December 24) at 10pm on BBC Four.
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