Retrospective: BBC’s ‘A Ghost Story For Christmas’
by Andrew McQuade
“There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories—Ghost Stories, or more shame for us—round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.”
- Dickens
Britain’s adoption of Halloween as a season for all things ghoulish is a relatively recent phenomena, gathering momentum by minute gradations, but still is somewhat fleeting compared to the glorious renditions accorded to that season by our friends in the U. S. of A. This has little to do with any discontent at larkish shenanigans generally, nor prudishness at a festival so rooted in things Pagan, naught a scintilla with disinterest in all things macabrely malignant. It has simply to do with the fact that for Brits, Christmas – with its long, dark nights – has long been established as the time for fear and it’s been that way multos annos.
In terms of what we would today consider popular culture, the man most directly responsible for this unlikely paradigm is a chap known in his own lifetime, affectionately, as ‘Boz’. Mr. Charles Dickens, like many a Victorian, was obsessed with the supernatural. As editor of All the Year Round, one of Victoriana’s most popular ’zines, he published not only his own unheimlich offerings, but a plethora of others by some of the best in the genre. The most important of these, by far, was Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. But the techniques Le Fanu pioneered – the slow escalation of narrative, the meticulous use of suggestion, the excessive under-statement, the well-used psychological underpinnings, the almost obsessive use of folklore - would prove far less important in his own lifetime than they were to become to his most renowned protégé M.R. James, who always placed Le Fanu “absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories”.
M. R. James’ accolade as the most important literary chill conjurer of the twentieth century has little to do with his prose prowess (exquisite but dry), depth of characterisation (superficial mostly), or intricate weaving of theme (for the most part as deep as a paddling pool). It has but to do with one factor – he was simply far, far scarier than anything else before him, and much of what has come since. But his inspiration went far further than obvious literary followers like Ramsey Campbell. Between 1971 and 1978 a series of ghost stories made exclusively for BBC television, drawing largely on James’ work, became a cultural phenomenon to which perhaps only The Twilight Zone can claim worthy comparability from the other side of the pond. Yet today these works remain impossible to see outside the British Film Institute’s Mediatheque, shrouded by obscurity to all save those who are seriously serious about their horror. Funded by license payer’s money, free from the trappings of commercial necessity, they represent a body of terror characterised by supreme, even excessive, under-statement, and precision that stands in total opposition to what the horror-bourgeoisie was pouring unto cinema screens at the same time.
Imagine if you will, Britain at the cusp of the 1970s. The 60s isn’t quite spiritually over, and the colour scheme of the whole country is rapidly becoming a dull shade of concrete. Everyone you know has a television, though only the rich kids down the road can claim to have a colour model. No one yet knows what a microwave is, but a new gizmo called the “washing machine” has created quite a stir. Less warming to the hearts of the old guard is the dissolution of the shilling as the British currency goes decimal and the tabloids subsequently predict the end of the universe. And what of terror? An occult revival is sweeping the nation. Bookstores are filled with tomes of ancient lore, and ghost story anthologies have become the new black. On the screen, Hammer is doing the same old thing it’s always done, keeping the British macabre tradition alive on celluloid, whilst the American scene becomes increasingly excessive but also increasingly culturally introverted. In a perverse way the genre is increasingly safe, despite the odd media frenzy. Violence and excess are the order of the day, and thus allow the viewer the safe and comfortable catharsis of being able to project their fears upon easily identifiable symbols on screen. Horror on screen is about releasing fear, rather than trapping it. Television, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. With strict regulations in place over what can and can’t be shown, those working within this medium have to be increasingly resourceful. They’re not allowed to fill the screens with horrorific imagery, and consequently the desired emotion is magnified to gargantuan extremes precisely because the viewer isn’t allowed to pin their fears onto easily identifiable signifers of gloom, such as in the cosy and therapeutic likes of The Last House on the Left.
The BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas: 1968-71
The best director of chills from the 70’s was not John Carpenter (too reliant on jump scares), Dario Argento (too reliant on pretty colours), David Cronenberg (too reliant on pompous intellectualising), or any of the other darlings of the horror-establishment; it was a little known British television director called Lawrence Gordon Clark and for exactly the same reasons as his literary forebear M.R. James – he’s quite simply far, far scarier than any of the so-called “masters of horror” canonised by the horror-bourgeoisie. With the success of Jonathan Miller’s now dated yet pleasing 1968 foray into televisual supernaturalism Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You acting as a launchpad for what soon became an annual tradition, the first official BBC Christmas Ghost Story for Christmas was broadcast in 1971 – an adaptation of M.R. James’ tale of murder amongst the cloisters, The Stalls of Barchester, complete with hooded spectre and diabolical cat.
Hooded spectres, usually malignly thin and hairy, are to Britain what long haired pale girls are to Japan. In a wealth of spectral lore, they stand at the opposite end of the ghoulish spectrum to your grey ladies in crinoline, and were the favoured negotium perambulans of both James and Gordon Clark, making flesh-creeping appearances in both The Stalls of Barchester and 1974’s The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.
Of the adaptations, The Stalls of Barchester is by far the most accurate to James’ original tale. Significant liberties were taken with the following year’s A Warning to the Curious. Yet, for all the changes to the story, A Warning to the Curious is perhaps the most faithful to James’ style. Starring T.V. veterans Peter Vaughn and Clive Swift, the story of one would-be archaeologist’s obsessive treasure hunt for a Saxon crown in a time of recession, amid a backdrop of class-torn and poverty-stricken Britain, is perhaps the most effective in the series. Few will forget the scene in which Vaughn, alone in his hotel room at night, is awoken by the sound of scratching… as of one scratching at a wooden box… the same kind of wooden box in which he has secured the object of his grave pillaging. Nor is it easy to forget a scene in the closing minutes of the film where one of the ancillary characters boards a train and hears, behind him, the sound of the conductor welcoming another traveller aboard. He turns to see the conductor opening a door, and then observes a look of confusion upon the conductor’s face when the said gent realises there’s but no one there. Clearly the chap has buggered off, thinks Mr. Conductor, but the viewer immediately knows the event to be of supernatural aspect, yet there’s nothing embodied in the film’s execution to confirm this. No eerie sound effect, no “Oh my God, he must have been a ghost!” exclamation, no anything.
Gordon Clark’s impeccably restrained direction insists on leaving the conclusions to the viewer to figure out, in short the fear stems from narrative, not from cinematic bombasticism. Such respect for the viewer’s right to imagination is rarely seen today or even in horror’s hey-day (for let’s face it, as psychologically powerful as parts of The Exorcist are, it’s still rather insulting to the viewer in the way it spells everything out for you). This respect is one far more readily scene in British TV of this period than across any other epoch or visual medium.
1973-75
1973’s follow up, Lost Hearts, is somewhat of a step down. One of James’ nastier tales, concerning child murder by a rather eccentric old bachelor who’s taken to reading medieval grimoires out of a fancy for immortality, the adaptation suffers by showing the ghosts of the children (who have quite literally ‘lost’ their hearts) too overtly and too close up. It comes too close to traditional conservative horror, where the other adaptations are considerably more liberated of these old-fashioned trappings of excess.
The following year’s The Treasure of Abbott Thomas again returns to the treasure hunting theme, adapted impeccably by John Bowen, who also wrote Britain’s finest piece of pagan-sacrificial-rural-community-are-all-in-on-it terror Robin Redbreast (ripped off two years later by The Wicker Man to much lesser though still enjoyable effect). One scene of particularly terrifying minutiae depicts the dismantling of a wall in an old crypt. The camera zooms in to extreme close-up on what the viewer can only discern to be a slimy something emerging from the skulking gloom of the fallen wall. In itself, nothing terrifying, but coupled with the sound effects as the slime gives way to a hideous shape protruding from the ebon that we never quite catch full glimpse of… it’s nightmarishly good. Again it represents a supreme achievement in technique – allowing the viewer enough to see something suggestive of malignancy, but without allowing the viewer to fully understand the nature of the situation and thereby turn a scene of utmost terror into one of politically correct catharsis. The final scene too, is uncomfortably irresolute, never allowing the viewer to see the consequences of the story, and thus leaving the viewer feeling haunted. The Treasure of Abbott Thomas is perhaps the only one of the adaptations to actually improve on the original story, which is hampered every-so-slightly by James’ insistence that the reader knows volumes of Latin and the intricacies of church architecture. The original tale ends, for example, with the line “Depositum custodi”, i.e. “keep that which is committed to thee,” which changes the entire meaning of the finale. But only if you know Latin.
1975’s The Ash Tree is, of all the works, the most overtly period in setting, a tale of the sins of the father befalling the son. Uncanny events start to unfold when the local squire decides to cut down the ash tree outside his window, a tree which is host to a certain someone, an incredibly pissed-off someone that his ancestor once wronged, and the tiny, hairy, blood-sucking things she calls “mine”. It’s here the most significant flaw of the series begins to show itself. Unless you’re well acquainted with English folklore – the significance of ash trees and their supernatural connotations in this instance – you are ill-equipped to read between the lines, and many of the narrative idiosyncrasies will be lost. A shot in which a hare is seen running across a field, for example, will be meaningless unless you know the folklore around witches. The series makes strong use of dialect too, which will be alienating to those brought up on the more export-friendly works of British cinema that strip out local colour in order to make it easier to sell to foreign territories (thus diluting the work’s realism and consequently the terror). Yet, in terms of cinematography, the 1975 piece is one of the best and it’s acted by some of British theatre’s finest. David Rudkin’s teleplay shows the same genius for craft, and knowledge of folklore, that he would employ two years later in Alan Clarke’s seminal Penda’s Fen – itself another excellent piece of Pagan esoterica.
1976-78
In 1976 the series abandoned the Jamesian formula and went for an adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic The Signalman. I dare say this tale is less known overseas compared with the much jollier A Christmas Carol, but it’s read by most school children in the UK as part of their curriculum, and is quite unlike anything else Dickens ever wrote: devoid of his usual humour, and bleakly pessimistic in its commentary on the inescapability of fate. Denholm Elliot’s performance as the world-weary signalman of the title who receives a ghostly visitation whenever there’s an accident on his stretch of the line is an all-time great performance regardless of genre. As an adaptation, not only is it word-for-word as Dickens wrote it, but the film’s use of symbolism to reflect the main theme of the story (which I’ll leave unsaid for those unacquainted with it) is handled with such cunning as to actually enrich the themes of the original story, even improving upon them.
1977 ditched the adaptation theme entirely, and focused on fresh material, this time a tale of stone circles and ritualism. The poor female protagonist of Stigma, as well as coping poorly with her dysfunctional family, finds herself bleeding profusely without any provocation from an unusual mark which has emerged beneath her breast. The use of misdirection is well handled here. It seems like the story is heading into the cheesy social-statement arena of body-horror, but the bleeding has origins in something much more ancient and, again, rooted in England’s ancient lore. In 1978 Lawrence Gordon Clark left the series, and the tale of that year proved to be the last. The Ice House, despite the return of writer John Bowen, is easily the worst of an otherwise excellent series.
We’d have to wait until 2005 and 2006 for the series’ long awaited return, sadly without Gordon Clark at the helm, but once again returning to M.R. James for source material. A View from a Hill and Number 13 are once more first-rate exercises in understatement, period detail, and creeping use of suggestion. They do not quite reach the level of the early entries, using some techniques too obviously rooted in the more conservative doctrine of horror cinema (loud soundtrack moments etc), but are for the most part very satisfying.
In 2010, a contemporary reworking of Whistle and I’ll Come to You, starring John Hurt, radically revised the original story, focussing less on the folkloric and more on contemporary psychological themes such as guilt and loss. Perhaps too overtly influenced by J-horror in places, rather than the techniques of its own national tradition, the remake is not especially dissatisfying in any way. Hurt’s performance is excellent, and the use of ambient sound in the piece is most effective.
And so, having come full circle, perhaps it’s the best point to reflect upon why the series continues to be held in such high esteem within the British horror community. Firstly there is the issue of how the films’ production. Being tax funded, they never have to be dumbed down to the standard of the ill-educated and attention-disinclined in the way horror cinema has done. Even J-horror, despite some superficial similarities in use of folklore and supernatural narrative, can’t claim this. It’s fair to say that state-funded material can reach heights that the capitalist model can’t, by virtue of the latter’s necessity to appeal always to the lowest sectors of the society in which it is based, and consequently rejecting the higher level of commitment the horror fan obliges. Secondly, we have the issue of authorial voice. Immaculate as Gordon Clark’s direction is, it’s James’ voice, James’ influence that you hear, even in the stories that have nothing to do with him. Considering the jump in medium, this is a grand achievement, which speaks well of Britain’s long standing tradition of period adaptation. And perhaps here is the crux: these films really are period adaptations first and foremost, and in being so they don’t conform wholly to the ineffective antediluvian standards of the horror-establishment. Compared to an adaptation like The Shining, which has its fans (I am not one) but has little to no merit as utilisation of source material, kicking out all the good bits of King’s novel and retaining only the silliest elements, as well as introducing much daftness of its own. The BBC series sticks rigidly to the Jamesian mantra, and is thus all the more successful in light of this. A few words on James’ approach are thus worth documenting here:
“Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo.… Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.”
In essence – there are no jump scares or overt images; horror stems always from story, no loud bangs; only silence gently broken, no gore or bloodshed; only glimpses half-realised, uncertain shapes half-seen. The series represents a glorious middle-finger up to the horror-establishment and is a far more genuinely British expression of terror than any of the commercially minded export-friendly works that Hammer produced. But what is the more fascinating is that besides Jonathan Miller’s film, the series really has no obvious forebears or successors. However uneven the British cinematic horror tradition may be en masse, those in the know appreciate that television is the far more suited medium to the form anyway, and in this form Britain has always been the world leader. Long may it continue to be so…
