Lot No. 249 is this year's Ghost Story for Christmas on the BBC (and Britbox for overseas streamers), an adaptation of the short story by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, written and directed by Doctor Who writer, actor, and fan Mark Gatiss, who is also a fan of British horror literature, movies, and anthology television shows from the 1970s. Gatiss filmed the story in just four days and tried to sneak in a Doctor Who easter egg that he ended up having to leave out.
Images: BBBC
Lot No. 249 is an 1892 Gothic horror short story of the same title about young academic Abercrombie Smith (played by Game of Throne's Kit Harington) meeting shifty cad Edward Bellingham (played by Slow Horses' Freddie Fox as another upper-class asshole), whose arcane research into Ancient Egypt ends up bringing about something horrible and nasty. It wouldn't be a British ghost story without something nasty and horrible. Take a wild guess what it is.
Mark Gatiss on the set of "Lot No. 249": BBC
Since the story was about ancient Egyptian artifacts, Gatiss had a prop scroll made featuring a character named Scaroth, the baddie from the 1979 Doctor Who story, "City of Death," where the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) battles Scaroth (Julian Glover), the last of the alien Jagaroth, who is ransacking the art treasures of history to rescue his people – in one sequence, Scaroth's face is seen on an ancient Egyptian scroll as ancient Doctor Who baddies tend to be. Gatiss had a replica scroll made and put it somewhere in the background during the story. He planned to include a shot of it in the show but didn't get to film it due to the shooting schedule.
"The downside, always, is time," Gatiss told RadioTimes.com. "Bellingham's room… the design is beautiful, and I wanted so many cutaways… we just didn't have time. There's a cutaway which will pain you because I actually commissioned it – I had the scroll made from "City of Death" with Scaroth in it. You can see it just behind Kit's head. Things like that really pain me, especially when you've actually gone out of the way to do it!"
Lot No. 249 is on the BBC and BBC iPlayer in the UK and Britbox in the US on Christmas Day.
Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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