Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Simon Callow, Shobna Gulati.

Never mind Halloween, if you want to feel the chill of fear wrap its clawed hand around your heart and mind, then Christmas is the time in which the intoxication of the spirit is more than just filling a glass of your favourite tipple, it is the beginning and the end of all things rational.

The church already has a deep-rooted use of symbolism, the reliquaries and mythos in which it can be a place of either comfort, or one where the emptiness of the building, the echoes of hundreds of years of silence can act as a predatory vulture preying on the weak willed and the damaged. And yet there is a third possibility, that the symbolism itself is one is of more value that what we place upon out own life, and that we will give anything to hold it in our hands for just a glimpse of the divine.

This is what makes ghost stories and moments of horror so delicious, the setting, the mystery, the ceremony, the language and the myths, they all add up to a belief that is full of drama and designed to have you doubt your own experience.

Fragments of a saint, that is the secret behind Inside No.9’s 2022 Christmas offering, the superbly unsettling The Bones of St. Nicholas. It is in these fragments of time that the viewer is treated to one of the greatest insights into the world of the foreshadowing.

We want to be unsettled, after all winter makes us retreat behind doors, the bitterness of reflection and memory is enough to cause us concern, and in the flickering lights of a church, the dark corners into which torches and candles bring little respite for those with eager imaginations, Steve Pemberton’s Dr. Jasper Parkway is on the hunt for a treasure that might just make his name.

The beauty of the tale is not lost upon the viewer, the invaluable Simon Callow gives a splendid performance as Dick, and the overwhelmingly talented Shobna Gulati is on terrific form as the grieving Posy, and a perfect foil to her husband jokes and own silent suffering, played with understated assurance by Reece Shearsmith, and the eerie way in which the puzzle fits together with earnest anticipation.

Miracles and dark phenomena are the creatures who see the world as it is at Christmas, the wonder of celebration, the dusk of what beholds our futures; the only hope is that we are surprised by our ending and not one that comes in the guise of foreshadowing.

Ian D. Hall