A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone – far too good to exist only as festive TV | Television

Hsky! Oh, it’s you, Doctor Blathery: forgive me, you scared me terribly. You see, it’s the strangest thing: this little stone statue I inherited with the cottage when I moved to this sleepy village from London (where everyone hates me because I’m from London), well, it seems to me … Oh, you gonna call me half crazy! It seems to move around from room to room when I’m not looking. I swear to you: last night, while I was reading by the fire and holding a handkerchief – which I do every night because it’s Victorian times and they haven’t invented the television yet – it fell over on the dressing table, and now … why , it’s on the dining room chair! Doctor, you look shaken. Sit down, I’ll get you some brandy. Doctor: what happened to the charming young couple who lived here before me all those years ago? You… you knew her, didn’t you?

Sorry, sorry. I slip a lot into the “Victorian voice” at Christmas. As you know, Christmas is the best time of the year – Coke commercials! Quality street! A bin for the reusable wrapping paper and another, much fuller bag for the glossy stuff! – but it’s also a strangely creepy one, and is arguably a better time to consume a ghost story than Halloween. Fortunately. The BBC knows this, and so they’ve continuously commissioned a ghost story to mark the jubilation – no, I’ve gone Victorian again. Anyway, they started in 1971, did it until 1978, stopped until 2005, have been doing it sporadically since then, and a few years ago someone had the good sense to just hand it all over to Mark Gatiss and say: “Mark, please Gatis as hard as you possibly can.” This is his seventh year doing just that.

It makes no sense that I’m spoiling this year’s effort, A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone (Christmas Eve, BBC Two, 10.15pm), but I can compliment it: as always, the casting is exemplary, with an opening frame story with Celia Imrie sprawled out in bed chomping on a cigarette holder and having huge fun flirting with (the very good) Mawaan Rizwan. Then we get to the meat of it, which is a classic new-husband-and-new-wife-and-new-village-and-good-housekeeper-and-friendly-doctor arrangement, Monica Dolan as the housekeeper against Éanna Hardwicke’s Jack and Phoebe Horn as Laura.

It’s all adapted from Edith Nesbit’s Man-Size in Marble, which I went ahead and read, and I think the clever tweaks make the already good story even better, more three-dimensional and structured. At some point in about 2010, some high-ranking wizard in British television decreed, “Oh, just let Mark Gatiss do whatever the hell he wants!”, and apart from Dracula episode three and the part in Sherlock where he goes to his mind palace , it has been a huge net positive for the culture. This is just more of the good stuff. Give me one a year until 2100.

Actually, I wanted to talk about it: we need more geniuses given free rein to do whatever the hell they want, and we need more anthology series where great British actors chew in small one-off roles and it seems I don’t, it has to be Christmas and I don’t think it has to be Mark Gatiss for us to have it. Woman of Stone is a perfectly formed 30-minute Christmas treat, one that sent me down a spooky rabbit hole (an earlier Ghost Story for Christmas, the Kit Harington-led, Sherlock Holmes-nodding lot #249, is still on iPlayer If you is brave enough, the original scary Whistle and I’ll Come to You is on YouTube I have a bunch of MR James audiobooks lined up for the train ride up north).

Basically, we need more television that makes the viewer open a bunch of tabs, possibly illegally download a PDF, and shove extra culture into their heads as a result of watching. An anthology episode that explores a weird idea to its absolute outer limits and then puts it back down is kind of the perfect form to do it in. I’m over TV shows that spend too much of their opening episodes building basic relationships that might become useful or important later—if I watch another comedy where a young, chaotic protagonist goes to lunch with their humorless older siblings, who have their shit together I just want to start screaming! In public! – and formats like A Ghost Story for Christmas just get right down to it, no fuss: the doctor cycles and you never know if ghosts are real.

Yes, I know, it’s a special little Christmas treat. But I want more treats! I want treats all year long! Why do we only get to play with form during December! Why can’t Rylan interview Mariah in March!