A Ghost Story for Christmas
The British do love their holiday ghost stories, so it only makes sense that they took that tradition to the television. Starting in 1971 they started adapting ghost stories written by M.R. James for the holiday season starring acting luminaries such as Robert Hardy, Clive Swift, Peter Vaughan, Barbara Ewing, Lalla Ward, Denholm Elliott, and Peter Bowles. They even adapted a Charles Dickens tale before foolheartedly deciding to create their own original content. Two abysmal stories, "Stigma" and "The Ice House," seemed to put the nail in the coffin of this series. But it was so beloved, with fans clamoring for remastered releases and Blu-ray sets, that that wasn't the end. The show returned in 2005 going back to it's origins by adapting an M.R. James story, "A View from a Hill." Once again they brought in the top names in acting, starting with Pip Torrens, Greg Wise, John Hurt, and many others. After his adaptation of 'The Tractate Middoth" in 2013 Mark Gatiss took over the show delivering it once again on a yearly schedule starting with an original episode in 2018. Thankfully Simon Callow was able to make "The Dead Room" work whereas Peter Bowles had let "Stigma" flounder. But I think that wasn't just down to acting, I really do think it was the material. And Mark Gatiss, bless his heart, just somehow is able to embody a bygone era whereas the writers in the seventies had other ideas. Bad ideas. Incestous flora ideas. And seriously, what was with the blood just oozing out of that poor lady's pores? Aside from that one original episode all the episodes in what we shall call the revival for lack of a better word have been adapted from the work of M.R. James. Except for this past year's. This past year's was adapted from "Lot No. 249" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This episode has it all, Kit Harington being a stuffy and incredulous nonbeliever of the supernatural, Freddie Fox being a fey and dangerous man who with longer hair unnervingly looks like his sister, and a man who may or may not be Sherlock Holmes played by John Heffernan, a man who should have definitely said no to that horrid Dracula adaptation by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, and in the coup de grace, a mummy who will deliver your coup de grace. This episode might just be my favorite among the revival episodes. Well, I do love a good haunting by mummy, and Conan Doyle, like the episode adapted from Dickens, seems to work a little better than the stories by M.R. James. I'm not saying there aren't genius episodes adapted from his work, they're just a little more nebulous, a little more open ended. Sometimes, even when dealing with the supernatural, you want a definitive ending, but if you're M.R. James how about some creepy kids wandering off eerily playing the hurdy-gurdy? You think I jest? Just watch "Lost Hearts" and I'll be over here laughing while you're unable to sleep. Sadly it looks like this tradition might be coming to an end due to budgetary concerns. While I only caught the revival episodes the last two years and was finally able to see the original run this year I think this fate is a shame. It's a tradition that survived whatever "The Ice House" was and I want it to continue for many many years to come. It's not like we're going to run out of material now is it? There's always a ghost story to tell for Christmas.
My parents made it a habit that for the holidays they'd give me box sets of their favorite Masterpiece Theatre shows so that when I wanted to watch something they'd get to watch something they wanted to as well. One Christmas I got a gift "From Your Irish Friends." After me trying to guess what the present was and failing, it turned out to be season one of The Irish R.M. staring Peter Bowles. I feel bad that it's taken me about twenty years to finally get to this show, but it really needs to be taken into account how many shows are out there and how many shows Masterpiece Theatre did that I'm trying to catch up on. That is a hella big backlog people! On the scene we have a lot of my favorite actors, or I should say, Peter Bowles, but behind the scenes we have the whole crew from Upstairs, Downstairs, a classic if there ever was one! So I knew the show had rightly gained it's status as a classic in it's own right. Yet it did take me awhile to get into. The show deals with the clash of the very British Resident Magistrate with his very Irish neighbors who come before him in court and seek to manipulate him outside of it. My problem was that I felt the show's humor was at the expense of the Irish, and that made me feel a bit dirty. The Irish have always been the oppressed in any relationship with the British and the way jokes were set up to have the Irish use their humor and wiles to try to outwit their enemy felt too much like it was written by British writers to make fun of and further demean the Irish. Eventually they found the right balance where everyone was the butt of the joke, British and Irish alike, and with this the show found it's footing. It could also be that as time went on I started to love the characters and saw them less as the initial stereotypes they were set out to be and more as the individuals they were. But this has to do with the actors more than the writing in my opinion. In the end the show is a marvelous amalgam of All Creatures Great and Small and Father Ted. I defy anyone to argue that the R.M.'s housekeeper Mrs. Cadogan (which she insists is pronounced Mrs. Cadergorn) isn't the inspiration for Mrs. Doyle on Father Ted. They both so enjoy their misery.
