JamesHitchcock

Between 1971 and 1978 the BBC used to dramatise a ghost story every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas", and the first five entries in the series were all based upon tales by that great master of the genre, M. R. James. The tradition has been revived in recent years, and ten more Christmas ghost stories have since 2005; at first these were shown at irregular intervals, but the practice of making one every year has been revived since 2018. (There was, however, no offering in 2020, possibly because of the Covid pandemic).

"Lot 249", shown on Christmas Eve 2023, is set in an Oxford college around the year 1890. It is based on a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock Holmes" fame. It opens with a conversation between two men who, at first sight, appear to be Holmes and Watson. One is tall, thin and clean-shaven with a long face; he clearly believes in solving problems by rational deduction. The other, shorter and stockier with a moustache, is clearly from a medical background. We learn, however, that this man (rather younger than normal depictions of Watson) is Abercrombie Smith, a medical student at Oxford University. We never learn the name of the other man; he is referred to in the cast list simply as "the friend".

Smith is worried about his neighbour in college, Edward Bellingham, an expert on the ancient cultures and languages of the Near East. Bellingham keeps an ancient Egyptian mummy in his room which he calls "Lot 249", that being its catalogue number when he bought it at auction. Smith believes that Bellingham is using magical Egyptian rituals to revive the mummy, and fears what this might lead to. His fears are worsened when another college student is mysteriously murdered.

The revived "Ghost Stories for Christmas" have varied in quality between the very good ("A View from a Hill", "The Mezzotint") and the disappointing ("Whistle and I'll Come to You", "Count Magnus" and the most recent offering, "Woman of Stone"). I would, however, rank "Lot No. 49" towards the upper end of the spectrum. There is a nice contrast between the two leading characters, Kit Harington's Smith, a decent, dogged, common-sense rationalist who discovers to his horror that there may be things in heaven and earth not dreamed of in his philosophy and Freddie Fox's Bellingham, the sort of fey, decadent hedonist that seemed to abound in the 1890s, the Aubrey Beardsley of Egyptology. The film may not quite match the standards of the best productions of the seventies series, such as "Lost Hearts" and "A Warning to the Curious", but it nevertheless makes suitably scary viewing for a winter's evening.

"Memento Mori" seems to have been a labour of love for director Jack Clayton. He had long wanted to make a film of Muriel Spark's novel, but had little success; producers were not willing to take a gamble on a film which was mostly about elderly people and therefore, according to received wisdom, not good box-office. In the end Clayton achieved his ambition, when he was himself in his seventies. This was to be his final film, and was not (as he had hoped) a feature film, but a TV movie, made for BBC2's "Screen Two" series.

The action takes place in the late 1950s. The leading characters are mostly a group of elderly Bohemians who form part of London's literary scene. Charmain Colston was at one time one of Britain's leading novelists, but now seems to be suffering from senile dementia. Dame Letty Colston, the sister of Charmian's husband Godfrey, is also a successful novelist. Charmain, Godfrey and Letty, and other members of their circle, are all being plagued by mysterious, and anonymous, phone calls. In each case a man announces "Remember you must die" (the literal meaning of the Latin phrase "memento mori") and then hangs up.

The plot is quite a complicated one; apart from the phone calls, much turns upon the will of Lisa Brooke, an associate of the Colton's and a former lover of Godfrey who has recently died. Lisa's housekeeper Mabel Pettigrew is hoping to inherit her estate, and is much put out when Lisa's widower Guy, a literary critic, turns up at the funeral. (Lisa and Guy were separated, and Mabel, along with many others, believed him to be dead). Henry Mortimer, a retired police officer turned private investigator, is called in to probe into the mystery of the phone calls, which many people are convinced have some connection to Lisa's past. Despite the portentous overtones of the film's title, the overall tone is more comic than serious.

I have never read Spark's novel, but watching the film I could not really understand why Clayton was so obsessed with filming it; the plot came across as not only complicated but also confusing, and the solution to the phone call mystery, revealed at the end, did not make a lot of sense. Nevertheless, the film still richly repays watching for the gallery of superb performances from some of the senior members of the British acting profession. There are too many good contributions for me to mention them all, but I would single out the following:-

Michael Hordern as Godfrey, a practised Lothario who even in old age still lusts after every younger woman he sets eyes on.

Renee Asherson as Charmian, seemingly a charmingly dotty old lady, but actually more with-it than many people, including her husband, suspect.

Maggie Smith as the cynically mercenary Mabel, the nearest the film has to a villain.

Maurice Denham as Guy, still mischievous and twinkly-eyed, and with as much of an eye to the ladies as Godfrey, despite his advancing years and the fact that he has to hobble about on a pair of sticks. And, unlike Godfrey, he ends up with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter.

Thora Hird as Jean Taylor, Charmian's former maid, now confined to hospital.

Stephanie Cole as the arrogant and overbearing Letty. Cole, unlike most of her co-stars, is still with us, but she was much younger than her character's supposed age. She was one of a number of British actors- Clive Dunn and Angela Lansbury are two others who come to mind- who seemed to specialise in playing characters much older than their real age. (It was around this period that Cole, then about fifty, starred in the sit-com "Waiting for God" in which she played a character aged around eighty).

Another reviewer, writing in August 2023, points out that the film had as at that date "sadly never been repeated on TV since its broadcast in 1992". It was, in fact, repeated last year on BBC4 as part of their policy of reviving classic BBC dramas, and I was glad to catch it as a chance to see some of the great and good of the early nineties. 7/10.