Co-creator of Sherlock Holmes Mark Gatiss has turned an Arthur Conan Doyle short story into his yearly Christmas ghost story for the BBC. Freddie Fox from Slow Horses and Kit Harington from Game of Thrones are linked to the star.
This will be the first time Gatiss has written a Conan Doyle horror story for television. It comes after his ghost stories, The Tractate Middoth, The Dead Room, Martin’s Close, The Mezzotint, and Count Magnus.
Harington stars with Freddie Fox (The Great) in a story that “revolves around a group of Oxford students, one of whom undertakes research into the secrets of Ancient Egypt, which become the talk of the college. Can these experiments truly breathe life to the horrifying bag of bones which is the mysterious Lot. No 249?”
Says Gatiss:
“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. 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 …”
Abercrombie Smith will be played by Harington, and Edward Bellingham will be played by Fox. Colin Ryan (Boundless), John Heffernan (Dracula), James Swanton (Stopmotion), Jonathan Rigby (Father Brown), and Andrew Horton (Slotherhouse) are also in the cast.
Adorable Media produced the project for BBC Arts, which will air on BBC Two this Christmas. A distributor in the United States has not yet been named.
Harington most recently appeared in the Apple TV+ anthology series Extrapolations, and he is set to star in the upcoming film Blood for Dust, which earned great reviews at the Tribeca Film Festival this summer.
