‘A Ghost Story for Christmas’ preview: ‘Lot No. 249’ confirms air date
We’ve got a fresh look at this year’s festive ghost story from Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss!
A decade since the Sherlock co-creator started producing his traditional mini-films at Christmas for the BBC, he’s back very soon adapting another Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tale.
Lot No. 249 is set in 1881 and finds a group of Oxford students researching the secrets of Ancient Egypt – what could possibly go wrong?!
Game of Thrones star Kit Harington leads the cast of this year’s A Ghost Story for Christmas as Abercrombie Smith, with Freddie Fox (The Crown, White House Farm) playing Edward Bellingham.
The cast also includes Colin Ryan (Boundless), John Heffernan (Dracula), James Swanton (Stopmotion), Jonathan Rigby (Father Brown), and Andrew Horton (Slotherhouse).
“Old College, Oxford plays host to three very different young academics,” we’re told, introducing “Abercrombie Smith, a model of Victorian manhood, clean of limb and sound of mind; Monkhouse Lee (Colin Ryan), a delicate and unworldly student from Siam; and the strange and exotic Edward Bellingham (Freddie Fox), whose arcane research into Ancient Egypt is the talk of the campus.”
“Could Bellingham’s unnatural experiments bring the breath of life to the horrifying bag of bones tagged Lot No.249?” asks the official synopsis.
Gatiss’s adaptation of Lot No. 249 follows 2013’s The Tractate Middoth, 2018’s The Dead Room, 2019’s Martin’s Close, 2021’s The Mezzotint, and last year’s Count Magnus.
When’s it on?
The 30-minute short film premieres in the UK at 10pm on Sunday 24 December on BBC Two and streaming on BBC iPlayer.
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No. 249 will become available to watch on BritBox in the US shortly after, with a release date set to be confirmed imminently.
Discussing why he chose Lot No. 249 as this year’s Ghost Story for Christmas, writer Mark Gatiss commented: “I would say it’s an overripe box of chocolates – it’s a typically full-blooded Victorian melodrama with elements of Boy’s Own story as well as that Doyle/Rider Haggard feel.”
“It’s the original “mummy” story as far as we know”, he explained. “It’s certainly one of the first stories to feature a mummy as an instrument of revenge. So everything we associate with the Mummy from Hollywood to Hammer starts here.”
“It’s got a terrific cast and it should be a delicious Christmas treat,” Gatiss added.
Airing alongside Lot No. 249 on BBC Two later this month is Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle, a new documentary series exploring the extraordinary love-hate relationship between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his iconic character Sherlock Holmes.
A complete collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books is available on Amazon.