Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Wilf Scolding, Simon Williams, Sara Crowe, James Holmes, Fisayo Akinade, Elliot Levey, Jessica Temple.
Christmas isn’t Christmas without a good ghost story to chill the blood before the delight associated with the big day, it is perhaps one of the true reminders of our own mortality that we have taken for granted in an age of reason and excess, and one that cannot be dismissed easily when placed against the all- consuming thought of endings, of how the year is once more placed in darkness and shrouded in winter meaning.
The modern era has its own writing heroes to whom a ghost story has been a joy of presentation, the ghost in the machine taking on an extra dimension to which the role of the computer and technological advancements have all played their part, and yet there is still something to be said for a tale that has come from a different period, one where humanity was controlled by fear in the supernatural, rather than the concern of the artifice of the machine.
The literary world has few post-war equivalents to M. R. James, Susan Hill being one of the foremost producers of works that get deep down beneath the skin, that not only chill the blood but can freeze it beyond reason; and it is to M. R. James that Christmas Eve once again turned. Following on from the television showing of The Tractate Middoth in 2013, admirer and dab hand at the chilling expose himself, Mark Gatiss explores the possibilities of M. R. James’ work in the alarming Martin’s Close which at what seems at first look is a simple tale of revenge from beyond the grave but is in fact a story bound in several layers, least of all that of how we perceive guilt in an age of superstition of class and wealth.
Turn the lights off, let the machine take you down a path once trodden, that noise from another part of the house is just in your imagination, for between Mark Gatiss and M. R. James, the souls of the dead are restless, the ghost of your misdeeds will chill you to the bone.
Ian D. Hall