A Ghost Story for Christmas

Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story comes to BBC Two this Christmas, starring Kit Harington and Freddie Fox.

1881. Old College, Oxford plays host to three very different young academics: Abercrombie Smith, a model of Victorian manhood, clean of limb and sound of mind; Monkhouse Lee, a delicate and unworldly student from Siam; and the strange and exotic Edward Bellingham, whose arcane research into Ancient Egypt is the talk of the campus. Could Bellingham’s unnatural experiments bring the breath of life to the horrifying bag of bones tagged Lot No.249?

An end-of-Empire chiller, Lot No. 249 stars Kit Harington, Freddie Fox, Colin Ryan, John Heffernan, James Swanton, Jonathan Rigby and Andrew Horton.

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No.249 is on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on 24 December at 10pm.

Meet the creator & cast of A Ghost Story for Christmas:Lot No. 249

Interview with Mark Gatiss

Can you can give an overview of Lot No. 249?

It’s a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle and it’s about a group of students at a college in Oxford in 1881.  One of them is a square-jawed Victorian hero, one of them is a foreign student from Siam who is rather less worldly and the third one is a scholar of Eastern languages called Edward Bellingham who has an unhealthy interest in reviving the dead. He buys an auction lot which is a mummy – Lot No. 249

What Makes Lot No. 249 a good ghostly take for this Christmas?

I would say it’s an overripe box of chocolates – it’s a typically full-blooded Victorian melodrama with elements of Boy’s Own story as well as that Doyle/Rider Haggard feel. It’s the original “mummy” story as far as we know.  It’s certainly one of the first stories to feature a mummy as an instrument of revenge. So everything we associate with the Mummy from Hollywood to Hammer starts here.  It’s got a terrific cast and it should be a delicious Christmas treat.

You’ve previously adapted MR James’ work for your Christmas ghost stories.  What are the differences between James and Conan Doyle in terms of their horror writing styles?

James is very much about a slow accumulation of dread –  you often start with quite normal circumstances, usually with a middle-aged bachelor who transgresses some unwritten supernatural law or finds something he shouldn’t have and then is gradually hunted down by a vengeful spirit. The Doyle story is much more of a straightforward horror archetype – it’s about reviving the dead, it’s about the mummy as an instrument of revenge. Doyle is a very different writer to James – he’s one of the greatest short story writers we’ve ever produced.  He writes the Victorian man and the strange threats they encounter rather brilliantly.

Can you talk us through where you shot the story and what it brought to the piece?

It was shot just outside Harpenden at a place called Rothamsted Manor which is an agricultural college. It’s owned by a family who made their money through farming fertiliser. The main house is an amazing mix of Tudor and Queen Anne elements – it had dozens of empty wood-panelled rooms which made it the perfect location.

Is there much difference stylistically between Doyle’s horror stories and the more familiar Sherlock Holmes stories of which you have obviously adapted several for screen.

As a fan and a scholar of Doyle sometimes you can read a story which feels ALMOST like a Sherlock Holmes story and there are certain stylistic and linguistic elements where you can tell it’s written by Doyle.  As someone who knows Sherlock Holmes stories as well as I do, when you read a story without Holmes it’s like having a missing chapter – there’s a strange pleasure to it.

Is there anything about Lot No. 249 which teaches us about Doyle and the world in which he lived and worked?

It tells us that he had an extraordinary broad range of interests – he was an athlete, a sailor, a surgeon and a detective – he solved several real-life mysteries.  He was all kinds of things and yet he looks like everyone’s ideal Doctor Watson – but he was really Sherlock Holmes!  There’s a great deal that can be read into Lot No. 249. Empire and its limits, homoeroticism, and about what lurks inside the Victorian male psyche –Doyle probably had no intention of writing about any of this, but it is there if you want to find it.  It’s full of strange swirling undercurrents and even though Doyle’s sympathies seem to be squarely with Abercrombie Smith and his straightforward, healthy masculinity – he also seems to enjoy Bellingham’s un-healthiness!

Can you talk about working with the cast?

It was a joyous experience – I’ve worked with John Heffernan on Dracula. James Swanton who plays the mummy is a fantastic physical performer who I worked with recently on The Quatermass Experiment at Alexandra Palace.  Freddie Fox I’ve known for years. He’s a wonderful actor and so naughty! It’s strange because Bellingham in the story is written as fat and rather toad-like and sometimes I think you need go in the other direction. I find Bellingham a very attractive character so I thought Freddie would be perfect – he has an incredible combination of power and naughtiness – like an evil cherub.  Kit Harington I’ve worked with on Gunpowder and we were in Game of Thrones although not in any of the same scenes.  I have to say he’s one of my new favourite actors – he absolutely nailed it.

Is there an element of the production you’re particularly proud of?

I think for a four-day shoot with very limited resources I think it looks absolutely beautiful.  Kieran McGuigan who is the DOP (Director of Photography) is an absolute genius.  It looks really sumptuous – I’m very pleased with it.

Interview with Kit Harington

Can you give an overview of Lot No. 249?

On the surface it’s a ripping old yarn about an Egyptian mummy terrorising an Oxford campus! Freddie Fox releases a murderous zombie and my character smells a rat and tries to stop him. But maybe once you release something like that… it can’t be put back in its box!  It’s a really fun caper penned originally by Conan Doyle and made into a wonderfully scary and frightful Christmas ghost story by the marvellous Mark Gatiss.

Tell us about your character – Abercrombie Smith?

He plays with a straight bat! Very proper. Doesn’t want anything disturbing his world order. Doesn’t trust anything that’s not out of the text books of the time… he’ll stick to his phrenology and be done with it, thank you very much!

What was it like working with Mark Gatiss and your fellow cast members – Freddie Fox et al?

A dream. I have loved Gatiss and his work for a long time and I adore his series of Christmas ghost stories. Freddie is a great, kind, generous and brilliant actor. It was rapid and fun and that was what Mark promised me. Let’s get in, shoot something fun and sit around at Christmas with mince pies and watch it. What a joy.

Did you know much of Conan Doyle’s work (outside of Sherlock) before you took on this role? What did you take away from the experience?

No. Outside of Sherlock I didn’t. This has all of the elements that we love in Sherlock though… the intrigue, the fantastical. I guess I take on the ‘Sherlock-like’ role in this piece…. but Smith is far too much of a box thinker to succeed in the ways Sherlock does.

I really enjoyed the period and how unashamedly ‘Victorian’ we were encouraged to play the parts. I knew that there was great room for play in the role with Mark directing and that was wonderfully liberating.

Mark Gatiss says you really embodied the Victorian gentleman.  Did the costumes and location help you bring the character to life?

Mark clearly saw that I’m a closet Victorian man trapped in a millennial body. I loved these costumes, I loved the moustache…I’d definitely do something of this period again.

How would you persuade your next-door neighbour to watch Lot No.249 at Christmas?

I mean what’s not to love. Egyptian killer mummy, Mark Gatiss directing and writing, Freddie Fox being evil, period costumes and silly moustaches. It’s nice and short and fun and will only give you minor nightmares!

Were you impressed by James’ transformation into the Mummy?

He was genuinely scary. When he ran it was one of the more disturbing things I witnessed this year. We called him ‘mummy’ on set, it’s quite a Freudian piece really.

Interview with Freddie Fox

Tell us about the character of Edward Bellingham – what do you think motivated him to pursue his ‘arcane research’ and his interest in the occult?

Bellingham is obviously a child of money and privilege, but he didn’t fit into the model of what a man of the time should be, and so consequently I think rather than trying to conform he went further the other way and go, I’m going to ‘un-conform’ – because society doesn’t recognise somebody like me, so I’m not going to recognise this society – I’m going to look elsewhere.

Bellingham gives the impression that of all the characters he’s the most attractive because he’s a bit of a flirt – but he also just has a sense of freedom about him that the other characters don’t have. Do you think that’s fair comment?

That’s what Mark always wanted, he said: have fun with this, he is naughty, he is flirty, he’s sexually totally ambiguous. Enjoy all of that, it’s not pure naturalism, it’s ever so slightly heightened. That’s the joy of this, and that’s what people want.

And there’s a lovely thing about him as a person: he’s travelled, he’s unlike Kit’s character, you know, he’s been around, he’s been to Egypt, he’s seen the Middle East, he speaks other languages he’s a Bohemian! And as a result a much freer person – much less English, if you like.

Where did you shoot Lot No. 249, and what was the highlight of the shoot?

We shot it in far North London [Hertfordshire] at a place called Rothamsted Manor, which was a Queen Anne period house, but had obviously had different functions over the years. It was one of the few period houses in and around London I’ve not filmed in and I loved it – it had an enormous amount of character and spirit, and the art department had converted these rooms that could otherwise have been quite mundane into an absolute forest of antiquity. It was just beautiful to step into the set and go, my God, this is accomplished film-making that people are doing here.

I think the highlight of the shoot was being slapped by Kit Harrington repeatedly, that was a lot of fun.

Are you a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle?  

I’m a huge fan. My father read them to me when I was a child, I’ve read a lot of the stories myself and I’ve listened to a lot of them on audiobook.

And are you a fan of ghost stories yourself?

Absolutely. And I fundamentally believe ghosts exist even though I have never met one or seen one I believe they exist, and I consequently love ghost stories – especially when they’re done really cleverly. Mark has a way of not just delivering a great story but blending it with wonderful tropes that a lot of younger film makers probably won’t know, like Hammer House music scores. Mark knows everything about everything about everything! So he’ll go, I fancy a little bit of that one from a Basil Rathbone one that never got released and I’m going to throw in a little bit of this from a horror movie that only Quentin Tarantino has seen a print of – he’s so, so well versed, and that when you watch it makes for something unique and really interesting.

How would you persuade your next door neighbour to watch Lot No.249 at Christmas?

It’s the Christmas Conan Doyle chiller adapted by Mark Gatiss, I don’t think you need to do very much else – it sells itself! But if I had to summarize it I’d say it’s the story of three students in an Oxford college, one of whom is trying to bring a Mummy to life.

Mark Gatiss said you don’t physically resemble Bellingham but you have an “incredible combination of power and naughtiness” – like an evil cherub.

I’ll take that.