{"id":42202,"date":"2023-12-20T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T08:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1944318"},"modified":"2023-12-20T10:39:48","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T09:39:48","slug":"mark-gatiss-fears-lot-no-249-may-be-his-final-ghost-story-for-christmas","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/mark-gatiss-fears-lot-no-249-may-be-his-final-ghost-story-for-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Gatiss fears\u00a0Lot No. 249 may be his final Ghost Story for Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It’s just really hard to scrape the money together.” <\/p>

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

Published: Wednesday, 20 December 2023 at 08:00 AM<\/p>

\n\n

The Ghost Story for Christmas strand has again become a festive staple since it was revived by Mark Gatiss \u2013 first in 2013 with an adaptation of The Tractate Middoth by MR James<\/a>, and more regularly from 2018 onwards.<\/p>\n

But writer\/director Gatiss fears that this year\u2019s outing, a screen version of Lot No. 249<\/a> by Arthur Conan Doyle, may be the final chapter.<\/p>\n

This year, Lot No. 249 was commissioned as a companion piece to BBC Two\u2019s docuseries Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle \u2013 but without something similar materialising in the future, Gatiss suggests that it may prove impossible to secure funding for his one-off, 30-minute stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been very blessed that this happened, because Lucy Worsley is doing this three-parter, so there was a way of doing it,\u201d he told RadioTimes.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>

All but one of the previous five Ghost Stories were MR James adaptations, with Gatiss noting,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cI<\/span>t\u2019s great because it means we can do somebody else \u2013<\/span> and I love this story, I had it in an anthology when I was a kid, so it\u2019s nice to do something totally different.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s just so hard \u2013 I mean, genuinely. If you talk to anybody, it\u2019s scary how scarce the resources are.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to sound like a bleeding heart, but people love them and I really hope we can find a way. But I think it\u2019s perilous because, as I always say, it\u2019s such an unusual slot\u2026 it\u2019s just really hard to scrape the money together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He joked: \u201cI\u2019m hoping for an eccentric billionaire [to fund it]!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Monkhouse\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
Monkhouse Lee (Colin Ryan), Smith (Kit Harington), and Bellingham (Freddie Fox) in Lot No. 249: A Ghost Story for Christmas.<\/span><\/figcaption> BBC\/Adorable Media Ltd\/Colin Hutton<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

A Ghost Story for Christmas began as a strand of short television films in 1971, with the original instalments directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. These aired until 1978, with the format having been revisited sporadically by the BBC since 2005.<\/p>\n

Lot No. 249, based on Conan Doyle\u2019s 1892 gothic horror short story, sees young academic Abercrombie Smith (Kit Harington) encounter the strange and exotic Edward Bellingham (Freddie Fox), whose arcane research into ancient Egypt could be inspiring something terrible\u2026<\/p>\n

Having famously adapted the author\u2019s Sherlock Holmes stories for the screen and now realising one of his short stories, Gatiss says he\u2019s not immediately looking to branch out further into Conan Doyle\u2019s canon \u2013 but he believes there\u2019s definite potential in the Professor Challenger stories, the most famous of which is 1912\u2019s The Lost World.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteven [Moffat] and I talked a lot about Challenger as a separate thing, because he\u2019s a wonderful character \u2013 Doyle did that rare thing of getting another one!<\/p>\n

\u201cChallenger is a brilliant character \u2013 obviously The Lost World is the one<\/em>, but the short stories are very good. Someone could do something great with that\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n