Ghost Stories for Christmas

Classic TV

Halloween Gems: The Signalman (1976)

28 October 2010 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

A slight departure from the normal Thursday Lost Gem/Weird Old Title Sequence in that today’s instalment is available on DVD and YouTube (I’ve embedded it below for you). But because it’s so awesome and because it’s Halloween on Sunday, I thought I’d break all the rules and cover it today anyway.

As I mentioned when I covered The Ice House in Lost Gems, back in the 70s the BBC traditionally made a ghost story each Christmas: it’s a tradition BBC4 revived recently and now BBC4 controller Janice Hadlow has moved to BBC2, guess which channel is going to be airing a new adaptation of A Warning to the Curious with John Hurt this Christmas.

As with this year’s ghost story, the Christmas ghost story was usually an adaptation of one of MR James’s. However, on rare occasions, the BBC would turn to different authors for ghost stories. In 1976, they turned to Charles Dickens and his short story The Signalman and got the young Andrew Davies to adapt it for them.

Starring Denholm Elliott as the eponymous signalman, it sees a traveller (Bernard Lloyd) come across his signal box and strike up conversation with him. It turns out that the signalman has been haunted by a ghostly vision that offers what might be a warning or even a greeting – but every time he sees it, a terrible accident soon occurs.

It’s a masterful piece of work, with a great atmosphere, great acting and a wonderful ear for 19th century language. It’s also bloody frightening. So if you’ve 40 minutes or so to spare, turn off your lights, gather around the screen and enjoy The Signalman.

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles 4×1 – The Drowned World

28 January 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

The Drowned WorldYes, yes, I know. It’s been out for over half a year now. But what the hell, I might as well play catch-up with the Companion Chronicles. I’l be steering clear of obviously “taking the piss” releases, such as Prisoner of Peladon, which stars precisely no companions at all, only David Troughton as a King of Peladon who appeared in a previous Big Finish play. But I’m going to be looking at most of them, I reckon.

First up is The Drowned World, which is a follow-up to surprise hit Home Truths, starring Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom. Home Truths is probably the best Companion Chronicle of the last three seasons, which, given it was about a character that might not even be a companion, was something of a surprise.

The question is: will the follow-up be as good?

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What have you been watching this week (w/e October 30)

30 October 2009 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

A bit of an odd collection of viewing treats this week:

  • Mad Men – Haven’t watched this week’s yet.
  • Community – Duff first half, but it pulled it together for the second half. Loved Avid’s TV self-awareness that made him hide away this episode, because he’d been getting too much screen time in the previous episodes.
  • 30 Rock – had its moments. Not as good as Community though.
  • Dexter – so many twists! Great ending.
  • Stargate Universe – still liking it. Still. Not loving it. But liking it. There were some beautiful bits of CGI in this week’s ep, Robert Carlyle was acting for all his worth, and the music was great – very Vangelis/Blade Runner.
  • The Thick of It – more political, less funny that previous episodes. And is Malcolm toning down on his swearing now it’s Rebecca Front in charge?
  • Ghosts in the Machine – Very good little documentary on BBC4 about ghost stories on TV. I’ve seen pretty much everything featured on it, surprisingly, and I thought they gave the Ghost Stories for Christmas too little time – I’d have loved to have seen more focus given to Andrew Davies’s adaptation of The Signalman as well the later stories that weren’t based on MR James stories. But good to see The Omega Factor getting a head nod. Still, for anyone who hadn’t see The Stone Tape et al, bit of a spoiler-fest since they gave all the endings away.
  • Dollhouse – Yes, I know I’ve given up on it, but I was told by Jonathan that last week’s was excellent, so I thought I’d watch it. It was certainly a whole lot better than previous week’s – except for any bit with Eliza Dushku in it – and it’s nice to see Vincent Ventrega still getting work. But I’m not loving it either.

Otherwise, the backlog’s growing.

What have you been watching though?

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles 3×5 – Home Truths

26 November 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments


Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: Home Truths

How disconcerting. I thought they were going in Doctor order with these, but now we’ve skipped back to William Hartnell again. Wait a sec while I get my bearings.

Right. Whenever there’s a Doctor Who list-writing competition/meme (and these do happen very, very, very often), one of the lists is invariably "shortest-lasting companion", with the challenge being to identify who counts as a companion: anyone who travels in the TARDIS? Anyone in two or more consecutive stories who travels in the TARDIS? It all starts to become a bit tricky, when you consider that Liz Shaw, for example, never actually travelled in the TARDIS yet is undoubtedly a companion.

Fellow competitors in the ‘tricky’ stakes are first Doctor companions Katarina (Trojan priestess) and Sara Kingdom (future secret agent), both of whom pop up around the time of The Dalek Masterplan then promptly cark it after a minimal number of episodes in said story.

Which makes a Sara Kingdom Companion Chronicle an even trickier prospect for Big Finish. How exactly can you get Sara Kingdom to start recounting a tale of her life with the Doctor when she meets him and dies in the same adventure?

Sounds like a bit of a ghost story. Gather round, everyone…

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Classic TV

Lost Gems: The Ice House

18 July 2008 Rob Buckley 16 Comments

The Ice House

Christmas is a time traditionally associated with ghost stories. I don’t know why that is – maybe it’s a pagan hangover, since “let’s celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ by scaring each other silly” doesn’t strike me as a particularly coherent Christian concept.

Probably the most famous teller of Christmas ghost stories is MR James, the Cambridge don who used to gather friends and students round at Christmas and scare them silly with tales such as Whistle and I’ll Come To You, A Warning to the Curious, The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral and Lost Hearts. These were eventually collected into various omnibuses and back in the 60s and 70s, the BBC started adapting the stories, airing a new tale at Christmas.

Initially, just one-offs, the strand eventually was formalised as A Ghost Story for Christmas, with Rosemary Hill as producer and Lawrence Gordon Clark as director. Sticking with James for the first few years, Hill strayed in 1975, getting Andrew Davies to adapt Charles Dickens’ The Signalman for the strand. She then chose to forego literary sources altogether and began commissioning original stories instead.

The first of these was Clive Exton’s Stigma (which I might deal with at a later time, if you’re lucky), but for reasons known only to the Beeb, the strand concluded with John Bowen’s The Ice House in 1978. Although BBC2 and BBC4 have repeated many of the episodes and the BFI have released some on DVD, The Ice House has never been repeated. It’s a Lost Gem.

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