Between 1971 and 1978 the BBC used to dramatise a ghost story every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas", and the first five entries in the series were all based upon tales by that great master of the genre, M. R. James. The tradition has been revived in recent years, and eight more Christmas ghost stories have appeared at irregular intervals since 2005. All of these, apart from "The Dead Room" in 2018, are based upon stories by James; "The Mezzotint" is the most recent episode, broadcast on Christmas Eve 2021.
Edward Williams, an academic and curator of a university art museum, receives from an art dealer a mezzotint depicting a night-time scene of a country house. At first Williams dismisses the print as uninteresting and of low quality, but it turns out to have a very disturbing property; it changes every time he and his friends look at it. Sometimes the moon is shining behind the house; sometimes it is not. Sometimes all the windows of the house are shut; sometimes one of them is open. Sometimes a mysterious figure can be seen in front of the house, but on other occasions he is not there. Williams's researches identify the house as Anningley Hall in Essex, and he comes to believe that the mysterious changes in the picture are connected with an unsolved crime which took place at the property in 1802, the kidnapping and possible murder of the young son of Arthur Francis, the house's owner. This crime is believed to have been carried out in revenge for the hanging of a local poacher named Gawdy.
The programme was written and directed by Mark Gatiss, who was responsible for several other entries in the revived series. Gatiss makes several changes to James's story. He updates it from the Edwardian period to the 1920s and introduces a female character by changing Williams's male servant into a housekeeper. One of Williams's academic colleagues is played by an actor of Indian heritage, although his original surname, Nisbet, is kept. The most important change is that Williams discovers that he himself has a link to the Francis family and that he might have put himself in danger by obtaining the ghostly engraving.
Gatiss has been criticised for this alteration by some on this board, but in my view he was right to make it. James's original is an intriguing variation on the ghost story, but it is not particularly scary, dealing as it does with a crime that was over and done with some hundred years before it was first published in 1904. It is a story that works well on the printed page but would probably not do so if it were to be adapted for the screen in a version that remained 100% faithful to the original. By bringing the ghost into the present day and by emphasising the personal danger which Williams is in, Gatiss makes it much more satisfactorily frightening.
The 1970s series of "Ghost Stories for Christmas" included two great classics, "A Warning to the Curious" and "Lost Hearts". I would not rate "The Mezzotint" quite as highly as those two, but it is on a par with "The Signalman" (based on a story by Dickens) and superior to any of the other original eight programmes. I would also rate it more highly than "The Tractate Middoth", the only other one of the modern series I have seen. 8/10
Some goofs. There were many capital crimes under the English criminal code in the early 19th century, but poaching was not one of them, so Gawdy could not have been hanged for this offence. Anningley Hall is stated to lie sixteen and a half miles north of Colchester, which would place it firmly in Suffolk, not Essex. Neither of these goofs occurs in James's story, in which Gawdy is hanged for shooting one of Francis's gamekeepers, and we are merely told that the Hall is in Essex, without precise details of its location being given.
Edward Williams, an academic and curator of a university art museum, receives from an art dealer a mezzotint depicting a night-time scene of a country house. At first Williams dismisses the print as uninteresting and of low quality, but it turns out to have a very disturbing property; it changes every time he and his friends look at it. Sometimes the moon is shining behind the house; sometimes it is not. Sometimes all the windows of the house are shut; sometimes one of them is open. Sometimes a mysterious figure can be seen in front of the house, but on other occasions he is not there. Williams's researches identify the house as Anningley Hall in Essex, and he comes to believe that the mysterious changes in the picture are connected with an unsolved crime which took place at the property in 1802, the kidnapping and possible murder of the young son of Arthur Francis, the house's owner. This crime is believed to have been carried out in revenge for the hanging of a local poacher named Gawdy.
The programme was written and directed by Mark Gatiss, who was responsible for several other entries in the revived series. Gatiss makes several changes to James's story. He updates it from the Edwardian period to the 1920s and introduces a female character by changing Williams's male servant into a housekeeper. One of Williams's academic colleagues is played by an actor of Indian heritage, although his original surname, Nisbet, is kept. The most important change is that Williams discovers that he himself has a link to the Francis family and that he might have put himself in danger by obtaining the ghostly engraving.
Gatiss has been criticised for this alteration by some on this board, but in my view he was right to make it. James's original is an intriguing variation on the ghost story, but it is not particularly scary, dealing as it does with a crime that was over and done with some hundred years before it was first published in 1904. It is a story that works well on the printed page but would probably not do so if it were to be adapted for the screen in a version that remained 100% faithful to the original. By bringing the ghost into the present day and by emphasising the personal danger which Williams is in, Gatiss makes it much more satisfactorily frightening.
The 1970s series of "Ghost Stories for Christmas" included two great classics, "A Warning to the Curious" and "Lost Hearts". I would not rate "The Mezzotint" quite as highly as those two, but it is on a par with "The Signalman" (based on a story by Dickens) and superior to any of the other original eight programmes. I would also rate it more highly than "The Tractate Middoth", the only other one of the modern series I have seen. 8/10
Some goofs. There were many capital crimes under the English criminal code in the early 19th century, but poaching was not one of them, so Gawdy could not have been hanged for this offence. Anningley Hall is stated to lie sixteen and a half miles north of Colchester, which would place it firmly in Suffolk, not Essex. Neither of these goofs occurs in James's story, in which Gawdy is hanged for shooting one of Francis's gamekeepers, and we are merely told that the Hall is in Essex, without precise details of its location being given.