Mark Gatiss fears Ghost Story For Christmas will end with Lot No 249

BANG Showbiz

20 December 2023 at 5:00 am·2-min read

Mark Gatiss is worried his new 'A Ghost Story For Christmas' will be the final one.

The former 'Sherlock' showrunner has adapted Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Lot No. 249' for this year's festive special as a companion piece to BBC Two docuseries 'Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle', which helped amid funding struggles for the one-off 30-minute tales.

He told RadioTimes.com: "We've been very blessed that this happened, because Lucy Worsley is doing this three-parter, so there was a way of doing it."

And despite loving getting to work on this year's adaptation, Gatiss - who first adapted 'The Tractate Middoth' by MR James in 2013 before launching 'A Ghost Story For Christmas' regularly from 2018 - is concerned for the future.

He explained: "But it's just so hard – I mean, genuinely. If you talk to anybody, it's scary how scarce the resources are.

"I don't want to sound like a bleeding heart, but people love them and I really hope we can find a way.

"But I think it's perilous because, as I always say, it's such an unusual slot... it's just really hard to scrape the money together."

'A Ghost Story For Christmas' was first directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark as a series of short television films in 1971, which ran until 1978.

The BBC has occasionally gone back to the format since 2005.

Gatiss joked that he's "hoping for an eccentric billionaire" to fund the next story.

'Lot No. 249' - which is based on Conan Doyle's 1892 gothic horror short story - stars Kit Harington as young academic Abercrombie Smith, who crosses paths with strange Edward Bellingham (Freddie Fox).

Despite his experience bringing Sherlock Holmes to the small screen and now this latest project, Gatiss isn't necessarily looking to adapt more of his work.

However, he thinks the Professor Challenge story 'The Lost World' is a possibility.

He added: "Steven [Moffat] and I talked a lot about 'Challenger' as a separate thing, because he's a wonderful character – Doyle did that rare thing of getting another one!"

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