A Ghost Story for Christmas

A Ghost Story for Christmas
The image is the title screen of the adaptation of "The Signalman". A lone traveller, wearing black Victorian travelling garments and silhouetted so that he cannot be identified, treads across green fields pockmarked by molehills. He is walking towards the camera. A slightly muggy, cloudy atmosphere pervades the image. The strand title "A Ghost Story" is superimposed over this in bold, white capital letters.
Title screen of The Signalman, the 1976 adaptation. Because this was the first non-James story, the strand's title appears on screen for the first time.
Created byLawrence Gordon Clark
Country of originUnited Kingdom
No. of episodes17
Production
Running time30–50 minutes
Original release
NetworkBBC1 (1971–78)
BBC4 (2005–06, 2018–19)
BBC2 (2010–13, 2020–present)
Release24 December 1971 (1971-12-24) –
present
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

A Ghost Story for Christmas is a strand of annual British short television films originally broadcast on BBC One between 1971 and 1978, and revived sporadically by the BBC since 2005.[1][2] With one exception, the original instalments were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and the films were all shot on 16 mm colour film.[3] The remit behind the series was to provide a television adaptation of a classic ghost story, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas.[4]

Each installment is a separate adaptation of a short story, ranges between 30 and 50 minutes in duration, and features well-known British actors such as Clive Swift, Robert Hardy, Peter Vaughan, Edward Petherbridge and Denholm Elliott. The first five are adaptations of ghost stories by M. R. James, the sixth is based on a short story by Charles Dickens, and the last two instalments from the 1970s are original screenplays by Clive Exton and John Bowen respectively.[5] Although the strand (or series) was titled A Ghost Story for Christmas in listings such as the Radio Times (followed by the title of the individual story being shown), the strand title did not actually appear on screen until The Signalman in 1976.[6]

An earlier black-and-white adaptation of M. R. James's "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'", directed by Jonathan Miller and shown as part of the series Omnibus in 1968, is often cited as an influence upon the production of the films, and is sometimes included as part of the series.[1] The series was revived by the BBC in 2005 with a new set of ongoing adaptations, although these have been produced sporadically rather than annually.[7]

  1. ^ a b Angelini, Sergio, Ghost Stories at the BFI's Screenonline. Retrieved 2010-7-7.
  2. ^ Cooke, 126.
  3. ^ Knott, J.A. (2004). "Review: A Warning to the Curious". zetaminor.com. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
  4. ^ Wheatley, 47.
  5. ^ Brockhurst, Colin. "A Ghost Story for Christmas". phantomframe.co.uk. Archived from the original on 13 October 2011. Retrieved 10 February 2009.
  6. ^ Wigley, Samuel (3 April 2014). "Ghost Stories at Christmases past". BFI features. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
  7. ^ A View from the Hill at BBC Online. Retrieved 2010-7-7.