Lot No. 249

I'm a bit of a devotee to the Christmas horror story, that is somewhat a BBC tradition. I've certainly seen and reviewed the contributions that Mark Gatiss has made to this run, though I'd be the first to say that I haven't liked all of them. I'm afraid that, for me "Lot no. 249" is another one for the disappointment file.

Abercrombie Smith (Kit Harington) appears at the house of his friend (John Heffeman) terrified and recounts a story about a fellow student at Oxford. Smith is training as a doctor and was called to the chamber of Edward Bellingham (Freddie Fox) an Egyptologist, as he has passed out. Whilst reviving him, he notices a sarcophagus and mummified occupant. Later, Smith hears strange noises coming from Bellingham's room and, in an incident that evening, another student, with whom Bellingham has a longstanding grudge is attacked. Smith comes to believe that the Mummy is the perpetrator of the attacks.

I think maybe some of the issue with this is with me and my expectations. As I've got older, the alure of Christmas TV has waned and these horror specials are one of the few things I look out for. So, I don't think that this is "bad" - it's just lacking in the sort of surprising or clever elements that I was after. I do think the decision to stray away from Conan Doyle's even more anticlimactical ending was a good one, but even this version I found lacking.

I think perhaps this one suffers from being a bit too explicit, in the sense there's never really another plausible explanation offered for the attacks. The reason for them too, feels like a bit of a stretch, though maybe that half an hour run time meant that further exploration of that wasn't possible.

Again, I don't think this was bad, and I'll be back in twelve months for the next one, but something a little more genuinely scary, or clever, would be welcome.

This is my least favourite of the revival 21st century BBC 'Ghost Story for Christmas' TV specials with very few admirable qualities but a range of unsatisfactory elements.

Characters are boorishly two dimensional and played with an according simplicity by the small cast. The production fails to generate a sense of authenticity which leaves it unable to function as a ghost story of a personal experience of the intrusion into the world of a malignant "other" force.

It is written in a way that suggests that initial on paper cleverness did not translate to the finished screenplay with ideas that should have been jettisoned after writing them up to a complete script being retained into production.

The mangling of a Sherlock Holmes cameo where Holmes fails dreadfully, indeed completely, at aiding a friend in need, unable to meet this request in any way leaves an odd smell behind. This is due to writing that should have not gone past a first draft.

This series seems to be running out of steam and this installment was so close to unwatchable that I couldn't imagine ever making a repeat viewing whereas some of its stablemates could sustain a second watch.

There are signs to me that the BBC can only make drama by rote, or by checklist, and that it is now a defacto Sunday School whereby the plebs can receive positive reinforcement from their social betters in the form of social morality parables delivered as inane TV programming. There is little other explanation for the writing and production decisions made in this adaptation that I can fathom, or speculatively guess at.

Certainly there is no sign of a ghost story motif in this: no sufficient effort is made to establish the normal, or natural, tempo for the world on view, as such inauthentic invasions don't seem weird and unsettling, we are just told that they are by explicit character exclamatory expositional dialogue. Without this sense of creeping weirdness into a hitherto normalcy there is no sense of growing fear, threat, menace for the suffering characters to endure in their mental experiences until the monster is finally made manifest to them and causes their ultimate dred and possibly expiry.

There is however sign aplenty that this has been put together to satisfy production criterias instigated in order to create a morally satisfactory cumulative effect on the audience: cognitive reinforcement of good and bad values. Sunday Schooling by TV drama.

As such it is both dim and dreary.

I rate at 2.5/10 because there were a handful of moments when the actors did enough with the dreck they were playing to hold my interest and suspend my disbelief enough to anticipate what will happen next in a scene. This seemed to me to be an occasional virtue of the actors rather than the writing or direction.

Is it possible that a mummy, known only as lot number 249, is responsible for a series of misdemeanors at an Oxford College.

They chose a great story, suitably macabre, Conan Doyle perhaps inspired by Britain's fascination with Ancient Egypt, and all of the discoveries. Who knows what films and stories were inspired by this.

This was pretty good, more a ghost story, less of a horror, the latter could have been ramped up a little bit. Atmospheric enough, and considering the thirty minute run time, they managed to tell the story

I've read that this may well be the final Ghost story from Mark Gatiss, which is a shame, when they've been good, they've been enjoyable, this was one of the better recent offerings.

As you'd expect from this series, it looks great, and was well acted, Kit Harrington was excellent, great actor, Freddie Fox also impressed.

7/10.

Another failure from the unenterprising pen of Mark Gatiss, whose monopoly of the whole 'Ghost Stories for Christmas' brand has long outstayed its welcome. This one eschews the usual M. R. James for an adaptation of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's horror stories about a marauding mummy. I've read the story and loved it, but this is a pitiful attempt at an adaptation: there's no atmosphere, no depth and no workable scares at all, just a guy in bandages popping up to go boo. You can't fault the cast members, who work really hard at giving it their all, but you can fault the man response for writing and directing this tiresome nonsense.

Why does Mark Gatiss have the monopoly on doing these Ghost Stories for Christmas? Surely someone else should be given a chance to show what they can do?

I haven't particularly enjoyed any of his, and I really don't think they should be associated with the classic Ghost Stories for Christmas. The only thing of his I rated was Crooked House and that's some time ago.

This latest one seemed very obvious and ham fisted with no tension built up at all, plus the added campness didn't work at all.

Perhaps it's the stories chosen that are part of the problem, maybe opening the net to other authors might help?