Posted in: BBC, TV | Tagged: arthur conan doyle, bbc, Britbox, Christmas ghost story, Freddie Fox, game of thrones, Kit Harrington, Lot No. 249, mark gatiss, Slow Horses

Lot No. 249: Mark Gatiss, Kit Harington Team for BBC X'Mas Ghost Story

Mark Gatiss will adapt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lot No. 249 for this year's BBC Christmas Ghost Story, starring Kit Harington and a mummy.

Every Christmas in the U.K. is a time for ghost stories, especially on the BBC, and often adapted by Literature and genre fanboy Mark Gatiss, so this year, it's going to be Lot No. 249, the classic supernatural story by Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Oh, and it's going to star Kit Harington, and even though he won't be playing Jon Snow from Game of Thrones or even Jon Snow from Channel Four News (yes, he exists in real life), he will probably still know nothing. Every main character of an English ghost story knows nothing. That's a feature, not a bug.

According to Deadline, the special will air as part of the BBC's winter schedule and comes after Gatiss adapted The Tractate Middoth in 2013, The Dead Room (2018), Martin's Close (2019), The Mezzotint (2021) and Count Magnus (2022) – four of which were based on works by M.R James. James is the classic 19th Century writer who established the main tropes of the English ghost story still being used to this day: a dude decides to mess with the supernatural, and the supernatural bites him in the ass – with interest. Every English ghost story follows this arc.

Lot No. 249 follows a group of Oxford students, one of whom undertakes research into the secrets of Ancient Egypt and becomes the talk of the college. Can these experiments truly breathe life into the horrifying bag of bones, which is the mysterious Lot No 249? Well, there's an ancient mummy in this story. What do you think happens with ancient mummies in ghost stories? Freddie Fox, who plays gormless MI5 agent and all-around jerk James "Spider" Webb on Apple TV's spy comedy-drama Slow Horses, co-stars with Harington. Wonder which one of them is going to be the one who messes with the supernatural and then have it bite him in the ass.

"It's a serious delight for me to delve once again into the brilliant work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this time for the Christmas Ghost story," said Gatiss. "Lot No.249 is personal favourite and is the grand-daddy — or should that be Mummy? — of a particular kind of end-of-empire chiller: a ripping yarn packed with ghastly scares and who-knows-what lurking in the Victorian closet."

Harington will play Abercrombie Smith, the hero and narrator, and Fox will play Edward Bellingham, his classmate who messes with the mummy (say that five times really fast!). Also cast are Colin Ryan (Boundless), John Heffernan (as seen in Moffat and Gatiss' Dracula), James Swanton (Stopmotion), Jonathan Rigby (Father Brown) and Andrew Horton (Slotherhouse).

Principal photography in Hertfordshire, England, has been completed, and the special is currently in postproduction, just in time for broadcast on BBC One for Christmas. Hopefully, it'll be streaming in the US on Britbox. Christmas is a big deal for television in the U.K., guys. And for the one ghost story on TV per year.

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