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Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, Review, TV | Tagged: A Ghost Story for Christmas, arthur conan doyle, bbc, doctor who, Freddie Fox, horror, Kit Harrington, Lot No. 249, Slow Horses
Lot No. 249 Review: Mark Gatiss Delivers Meaty, Campy Christmas Horror
Lot No. 249 is Mark Gatiss' richest, best literary adaptation yet - with A Ghost Story for Christmas bringing scares, camp & commentary.
Ahhh, Christmas, and it's time for the BBC's Ghost Story for Christmas, with this year being Lot No. 249, writer-director Mark Gatiss' adaptation of the Victorian era short story that's an unknown and seminal horror story for many reasons. Kit Harrington plays Abercrombie Smith, an archetypal young Victorian gentleman studying medicine at the hallowed halls of Oxford University in the late 1880s. He befriends doomed fellow student Monkhouse Lee, played by a jittery and melancholy Colin Ryan. Lee is nervous about their fellow housemate, the worldly Edward Bellingham, played by Freddie Fox, best known for playing an upper-class dickhead spy in Slow Horses.
Bellingham has brought back exotic and arcane artefacts from ancient Egypt and has been experimenting with potentially dangerous rituals, including with the mummy he bought, part of Auction Lot No. 249 he acquired from his trip overseas. Yes, somehow, in late 19th Century England, it's perfectly all right to have a mummy in your dorm room at university. Soon, violent, horrifying incidents occur on campus, with sightings of a creature in rags. Smith takes it upon himself to stop Bellingham before things get worse. Hilarity ensues.
Lot No. 249 might be the richest story Gatiss has made for A Ghost Story for Christmas. He writes and directs with more relish than usual, and that glee is in every frame and the actors' performances. This is where Harrington, Ryan, and Fox's classic training come into play, and they all enjoy chewing the scenery and getting their teeth around a lot of plummy Victorian dialogue. Once again, Freddie Fox plays the type of role he's the grandmaster at: a smug, entitled, sleazy upper-class British shithead, and he has never been this oily before. He plays every scene with a seedy flirtation, especially in his scenes with Harrington. The whole adaptation is soaking wet with homoerotic subtext and just the right sprinkling of camp on top of the air of Gothic Victorian Horror. Doyle's story was published at the time when the tomb of Tukenkahmen was discovered, and the European public became fascinated with the exoticism of ancient Egypt, particularly the mummy. Doyle's story is, in fact, the story that singlehandedly kicked off the "mummy" horror subgenre that resulted in the classic 1930s movies, the Hammer Horror movies of the 1960s and Universal Studio's attempts to revive it.
Gatiss' script explores class tension, imperialism and xenophobia that Doyle's original short story took for granted in the 19th and early 20th Century. He also makes changes to the story while staying faithful to its main plot. He just had to sneak in a Sherlock Holmes easter egg in the form of an unnamed "friend" played by John Heffernan that Harrington talks to, who's a consultant planning to move to London
Gatiss has said this might be the last Ghost Story for Christmas for the foreseeable future due to budget cuts at the BBC. Lot No. 249 was greenlit only because it served as a companion piece to Lucy Worsley's historical documentary about Arthur Conan Doyle's literary career, Killing Sherlock. That's too bad since this is the most substantial and fun adaptation that Gatiss has written and directed for the Ghost Story for Christmas, even with the abandoned Doctor Who easter egg, and if this is the last, at least he's going out on a high note.
Lot No. 249 is streaming on the BBC iPlayer and in the US on Britbox.
Lot No. 249
8/10
The best BBC Ghost Story for Christmas, Mark Gatiss brings us the most subtantial, thematically rich adaptation to date, faithfully recreating the original Arthur Conan Doyle story that kicked off the whole genre of mummy horror movies in the 20th Century, keeping the air of gothic horror but also suffused with commentary on class, homoeroticism, imperialism and xenophobia, and the actors have as much relish for the material as Gatiss does.
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