Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: arthur conan doyle, bbc, Christmas ghost story, doctor who, Freddie Fox, game of thrones, Kit Harrington, Lot No. 49, mark gatiss

Lot No. 249: Mark Gatiss Adapts Conan Doyle Ghost Story for Christmas

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lot No. 249 is this year's Christmas Ghost Story for Christmas on the BBC, adapted by Mark Gatiss with Kit Harington.

Published Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:18:08 -0600

by Adi Tantimedh

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Ghost stories at Christmas are a British tradition, particularly on the BBC, and this year it's an adaptation of a short story by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, Lot No. 249. Mark Gatiss' adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story comes to BBC Two this Christmas, starring Kit Harington from that show you keep talking about and Freddie Fox from Slow Horses.

"1881. Old College, Oxford, plays host to three very different young academics: Abercrombie Smith (Harington), 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 (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?"

An end-of-Empire chiller, Lot No. 249 stars Kit Harington, Freddie Fox, Colin Ryan, John Heffernan, James Swanton, Jonathan Rigby and Andrew Horton. The story is ripe with subtext – it was written when Tutenkhamen's tomb was discovered in archeological digs, and the mummy and Egyptian artifacts were brought back to England, fueling the European public's imagination coupled with subconscious fears of foreign invasion at the same time. Conan Doyle's story was one of the first supernatural horror stories to feature a Mummy rising from the dead to menace people.

"There's a great deal that can be read into Lot No. 249," said Gatiss. "Empire and its limits, homoeroticism, and about what lurks inside the Victorian male psyche –Doyle probably had no intention of writing about any of this, but it is there if you want to find it."

Harrington plays the hero of the story, a straight-laced Victorian gentleman with an air of "You know nothing, Jon Snow" about him straight from Game of Thrones. "He plays with a straight bat! Very proper. Doesn't want anything disturbing his world order. Doesn't trust anything that's not out of the textbooks of the time… he'll stick to his phrenology and be done with it, thank you very much! I really enjoyed the period and how unashamedly 'Victorian' we were encouraged to play the parts. I knew that there was great room for play in the role with Mark directing, and that was wonderfully liberating."

Freddie Fox, a rising actor currently making a name for himself in series like Slow Horses, often playing posh douchebags, is a big fan of Conan Doyle's stories and of Lot. No. 249 and was full of praise for Gatiss's adaptation."Mark has a way of not just delivering a great story but blending it with wonderful tropes that a lot of younger filmmakers probably won't know, like Hammer House music scores. Mark knows everything about everything about everything!"

"I think the highlight of the shoot was being slapped by Kit Harrington repeatedly," added Fox. "That was a lot of fun."

A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No. 249 will premiere on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on 24 December at 10 pm in the UK and will likely stream on Britbox in the US.

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