Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Una Stubbs, John Castle, Sacha Dhawan, Eleanor Bron, David Ryall, Louise Jameson, Nicholas Burns, Roy Barraclough, Charlie Clemmow, Mathew Foster.

At one time even just the name of English writer M.R. James was enough to send readers and viewers alike scuttling into the dark recess of their mind. The master of the supernatural had an uncanny way of capturing base fears and turning them into works of true genius. A true genius which in some ways has not been surpasses more than a hundred years after his first written ghost story.

Modern audiences, force fed an almost weekly diet of horror films have almost overdosed on the diet of gore and the not always suspenseful, other-worldly titillation that comes from the abundance of writers and film studios. It has almost become so saturated that it has become sterile, with even one great film unfortunately spawning a plethora of sequels, arguably more about making cinematic profit than good, memorable stories.

If that has happened then Mark Gatiss, a man whose own talent is certainly not in question and who can pen a story as good as any, in his directorial debut captures the essence of the revered M.R. James with his version of the classic tale of The Tractate Middoth.

Mark Gatiss uses his overpowering love of the genre and an almost inexhaustible knowledge of someone who grew up in cinema’s silver period to create something very special in this made for television adaptation. The horror, the suspense, the slight raising of the hairs on the arm are framed neatly as Sacha Dhawan as the librarian Garrett comes face to face with the epitome of darkness and the narrative and sublime acting delivered by the likes of John Castle, Roy Barraclough and Louise Jameson, all making a very welcome return to the television screen, are more than enough to suggest that M.R. James still has a place in a world that has changed beyond recognition from the days when he would pen a new chilling tale for the Cambridge University Chit-Chat Club.

The Tractate Middoth had the power to chill the blood but also to attain the rare feat of making the audience member reach for a collection of M.R. James’s stories and continuing the fright and terror that was unleashed by Mark Gatiss.

Ian D. Hall