Count Magnus

Jason Watkins plays the buffoonish and ignorant travel writer Mr Wraxhall who is visiting a small village in Sweden.

Despite warnings, Wraxhall cannot help learning more about the legend of Count Magnus, a man with a notoriously bad reputation.

The overinqusitive Wraxhall dismisses the spooky tales told to him by the local innkeeper. He decides to break into Magnus's mausoleum to have a little look.

Mark Gatiss directs and adapts this MR James story. The BBC did not manage it to make this in the 1970s during their run of Christmas ghost stories.

However Gatiss is hemmed in by the budgetary limitations. It is atmospheric, there is some Scandinavian bleakness but it really did not deliver too much on the chills.

I did like who the narrator turned out to be.