A Ghost Story for Christmas

M. R. James in about 1900

The first five films are adaptations of stories from the four books by M. R. James, published between 1904 and 1925.[8] The ghost stories of James, an English mediaeval scholar and Provost of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, were originally narrated as Christmas entertainments to friends and selected students.[8][9]

The sixth film, The Signalman, is an adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens published in his magazine All the Year Round in 1866. In its original context, it was one of eight stories set around the fictional Mugby Junction and its branch lines. It was inspired by the Staplehurst rail crash of June 1865, which Dickens himself survived, having attended to dying fellow passengers. He subsequently suffered panic disorders and flashbacks as a result.[10]

The final two stories were based on original screenplays, one by Clive Exton, who was an experienced television screenwriter, and the other by John Bowen, who was primarily known as a novelist and playwright,[11][12] but also had extensive television experience, including adapting The Treasure of Abbot Thomas earlier in the series.

Lawrence Gordon Clark had made his name as a BBC documentary director during the 1960s. The Stalls of Barchester was the first dramatic production he directed.[13] Clark recalled in an interview for the BFI's DVD release in 2012 that "the BBC at that time gave you the space to fail, and generously so too. They backed you up with marvellous technicians, art departments, film departments, and so forth."[14]

I was itching to move into drama and knew I had exactly the source material I wanted. I'd discovered M.R. James at boarding school and loved him. So I met with Paul Fox, who was at the time Controller of BBC1. I brought a copy of M.R. James's Ghost Stories with me, with a bookmark stuck in "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral". The fact that period drama always has been very popular at the BBC probably helped.[15]

Norwich Cathedral cloister, a location in The Stalls of Barchester.

Clark recalls that "Paul Fox gave us a tiny budget ... and we set out to do a full-blooded drama on location. Budgets were really tiny, and we shot for ten days and brought the film in for about 8,000 pounds."[14] Unusually for a BBC television drama of the 1970s, each instalment was filmed entirely on location using 16 mm film.[13] As a result, the cameraman John McGlashan, who filmed the first five adaptations, was able to make use of night shoots and dark, shadowy interiors, which would not have been possible with the then-standard video-based studio interiors.[14][16] Clark notes that McGlashan, and the sound recordist Dick Manton's contribution to the series "was every bit as great as mine,[14][17]

In an interview in 1995, Lawrence Gordon Clark stated that the stories "focus on suggestion. The aim, they say, is to chill rather than shock. Partly because television is not best suited to carrying off big-screen pyrotechnics, but mainly because they want to keep faith with the notion of a ghost story in its literary rather than cinematic tradition."[18] Helen Wheatley notes that the best adaptations maintain the stories' "sense of decorum and restraint, ... withholding the full revelation of the supernatural until the very last moment, and centring on the suggestion of a ghostly presence rather than the horror of visceral excess and abjection."[19] Clark noted in a 2014 interview that he tried to make the second adaptation, A Warning to the Curious as "essentially, a silent film, with the tension building slowly throughout the visual images".[17] After the success of the first two low-budget adaptations which had been largely independently produced by Clark, the stories came under the wing of the BBC's Drama Department, with a new producer, Rosemary Hill, and an increased budget.[20]

The adaptations, although remaining true to the spirit of M.R. James, make alterations to suit the small screen - for example, A Warning to the Curious avoids the convoluted plot structure of M. R. James's original, opting for a more linear construction and reducing the number of narrators. In addition, the central character, Paxton, is changed from a young, fair-haired innocent who stumbles across the treasure to a middle-aged character driven by poverty to seek the treasure and acting in full awareness of what he is doing.[9] After the first two adaptations, both by Clark, the tales were adapted by a number of playwrights and screenwriters. For The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Clark recalls John Bowen's script "took some liberties with the story—which made it for the better I think...It's really quite a funny story until it gets nasty, although the threat is always there. James has a mordant sense of humour, and it's good to translate that into cinematic terms when you can. I'd always wanted to do a medium scene, and John came up with a beauty."[17]

Clark is less complimentary of the adaptation of The Ash Tree, which he felt didn't make Mistress Mothersole an effective villain, as a result of both his and adaptor David Rudkin's sympathy for witch trial victims; "We know so much about the hysteria of the witch trials and the ignorance and downright evil that fueled them that it was well-nigh impossible to portray her as James intended. Although, even he makes her a complicated character, hinting that she was popular with local farmers and the pagan fertility aspects that this implies. Frankly, I don't think the script quite did justice to the story, and maybe someone else should have a go at it."[17]

In his screenplay for The Signalman Andrew Davies adds scenes of the traveller's nightmare-plagued nights at an inn, and reinforces the ambiguity of the traveller-narrator by restructuring the ending and matching his facial features with those of the spectre.[10] The film also makes use of visual and aural devices. For example, the appearance of the spectre is stressed by the vibrations of a bell in the signalbox and a recurring red motif connects the signalman's memories of a train crash with the danger light attended by a ghostly figure.[10]

Clark's final Ghost Story for Christmas, Stigma, was an original story by Clive Exton filmed around the stone circles at Avebury, Wiltshire. He had wanted to film James' "Count Magnus", the teleplay of which had been written by Basil Copper, but was unable to obtain the budget.[17][21] Although he felt the substitute film was "effective", Clark had by this time left the BBC to go freelance, joining Yorkshire Television, where he and Exton made another James adaptation Casting the Runes in 1979.[17][22]

"It is a fine porch, isn't it?" St Mary's Church in Happisburgh, Norfolk, a film location in A Warning to the Curious.

The filming of the adaptations took place at a variety of locations. Clark notes that James gave him "a wonderful excuse to discover...places where you could best impart tension and atmosphere."[23] East Anglia, where M. R. James set many of his stories, was the location for the two first films. The Stalls of Barchester was filmed at Norwich Cathedral and in the surrounding close.[24] For A Warning to the Curious, "Seaburgh" (a disguised version of Aldeburgh, Suffolk) was filmed on the coast of North Norfolk at Waxham, Holkham Gap, Happisburgh, Wells-next-the-Sea and on the North Norfolk Railway.[25][26] Clark recalls filming in North Norfolk in late February, with consistently fine cold weather "with a slight winter haze which gave exactly the right depth and sense of mystery to the limitless vistas of the shoreline there."[17]

Later locations include Ormsby Hall and the Pelham Mausoleum at Brocklesby, Lincolnshire for Lost Hearts, Wells Cathedral, the Orchardleigh Estate, Frome and its 13th century church for The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,[27] Prideaux Place near Padstow for The Ash-Tree[28] and the Severn Valley Railway near Kidderminster for The Signalman.[17][29][30] For The Signalman, a replica Great Western Railway signal box was erected in the cutting on the Kidderminster side of Bewdley Tunnel, and Highley signal box was used for the interior shots.[31]

Adam Scovell, analysing the aural aesthetics of the BBC Ghost Stories, notes that although Clark talks about "stock music", the early adaptations make use of what were then new, avant-garde classical works found in the BBC's gramophone library at Egton House - A Warning to the Curious uses György Ligeti's Atmosphères (1961) and Cello Concerto (1966) to signify the appearance of the ghost of William Ager, and the high, meandering flute part of another contemporary work, Bruno Maderna's Hyperion III (1966), is used in both this film and Lost Hearts.[32]

Lost Hearts also makes use of Ralph Vaughan Williams's English Folk Song Suite and the hurdy-gurdy music of the ghostly Italian boy, who plays the tune L'amour De Moi.[32] The Treasure of Abbot Thomas was the only entry in the series to have its own original score.[20] Geoffrey Burgon's score consists of an organ, two countertenors and various unconventional percussion instruments; according to Clark, a "mixture of evensong and bicycle chains".[32]

With the exception of the final film, the tales were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. The final episode was directed by Derek Lister.[33]

BBC Four revisited the series at Christmas 2004, and in 2005 began to produce new adaptations of stories by M. R. James, broadcast along with repeats of episodes from the original series.[34] BBC Two premiered a new adaptation by Neil Cross of M. R. James's "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" on Christmas Eve 2010.[36]

Mark Gatiss's adaptation of "The Tractate Middoth", another story by M. R. James, was broadcast on BBC Two on Christmas Day 2013. This was followed by a documentary, M. R. James: Ghost Writer.[37]

An original tale written and directed by Mark Gatiss entitled The Dead Room was broadcast on BBC Four on Christmas Eve 2018.[38] Gatiss adapted and directed another James adaptation, "Martin's Close", in 2019 for BBC Four.[39] This was followed by his third M.R. James adaptation, "The Mezzotint", for BBC Two in 2021, and his fourth, "Count Magnus", in 2022.