{"id":27611,"date":"2022-12-22T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T08:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1758017"},"modified":"2022-12-22T09:52:03","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T08:52:03","slug":"mark-gatiss-on-adapting-count-magnus-and-loving-the-traitors","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/mark-gatiss-on-adapting-count-magnus-and-loving-the-traitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Gatiss on adapting Count Magnus and loving The Traitors"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Morgan Jeffery\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 22 December 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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First published in 1904, Count Magnus<\/a> was famously one of a few of M R James\u2019s ghost stories which eluded Lawrence Gordon Clark, the director\/producer who spearheaded the BBC\u2019s A Ghost Story for Christmas strand through the 1970s. Back then, a screen version was nixed by the BBC for budgetary reasons, but Mark Gatiss \u2013 Clark\u2019s successor who now oversees a new series of macabre tales \u2013 tells RadioTimes.com<\/a> that he\u2019s trying not to feel \u201cintimidated\u201d by the story\u2019s positioning as the \u201cHoly Grail\u201d of James adaptations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d always hoped to do it, but it\u2019s an annual fight to find the money to do these,\u201d Gatiss explains, revealing that what sunk Clark\u2019s Count Magnus \u2013 the story\u2019s Swedish setting \u2013 almost nixed his own take. \u201cI was going to do another [ghost story], which I won\u2019t name \u2013 that for various reasons didn\u2019t come about and I suddenly thought, \u2018It\u2019s my job make it look<\/em> like Sweden, that\u2019s what I should do. If I get a largely Scandinavian cast and the right location, I can do it\u2026\u2019 because the story itself is not that complicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not masses of locations or people. So then I suddenly became obsessed with doing [it] and it sort just finally slid into place. I\u2019m very, very happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While fans of Gatiss\u2019s efforts might insist that these ghost stories \u2013 which have also included 2013\u2019s The Tractate Middoth, 2018\u2019s The Dead Room, 2019\u2019s Martin\u2019s Close and last year\u2019s The Mezzotint<\/a> \u2013 now feel like a festive tradition, he insists that getting the green light never grows any easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually said when I met Suzy [Klein, the BBC\u2019s head of arts], \u2018Is there any way we can not have to have this meeting every January?\u2019 \u2013 but that\u2019s just the way broadcasting is. Budgets are so tight everywhere. Even though there is such a hunger for it, it\u2019s a tough sell.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve tried so many different ways, like suggesting we make three at once. But it\u2019s just difficult. So I\u2019m just so thrilled each time I get one away.\u201d<\/p>

Like his previous adaptation, Gatiss\u2019s Count Magnus \u2013 which follows the <\/span>inquisitive Mr Wraxhall (Jason Watkins) as he attempts to unpick the shadowy history of the titular Count \u2013 takes a few liberties with the source material. \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of trying to take the form forward,\u201d he says. \u201cLawrence\u2019s last one, Stigma [an original story aired in 1977], is an extraordinarily grim and incredibly \u201870s piece of work and that\u2019s what I tried to do with The Dead Room, to do a modern one. But equally, what people really want is a pleasing terror, this sort of chilly comfort blanket, isn\u2019t it? So I like the idea of mixing it up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The half-hour chiller also contains a surprising amount of humour, as Watkins\u2019s character \u2013 in Gatiss\u2019s own words \u2013 \u201cignores so many red flags\u201d as he\u2019s drawn inexorably closer to a dark, unseen presence. This blackly comic element, though, is something Gatiss insists is very much present in the original stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit like Sherlock Holmes \u2013 people who treat it as an edifice miss the point, you know. Certainly, [Arthur] Conan Doyle didn\u2019t think about Sherlock Holmes like that \u2013 and M R James wrote his stories to be read, by him, and there are lots of funny characters in them, I think so he could do funny voices!\u201d<\/p>\n

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