The first of the BBC’s annual A Ghost Story for Christmas strand (though that title never actually appeared on screen) is adapted from perhaps M.R. James’ most straightforward story, 1910’s The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral: Materials for a Ghost Story originally published in Contemporary Review. Relocated to 1932, the TV version features Clive Swift as Dr Black, an academic charged with cataloguing the untidy library of Barchester Cathedral. He is shown a box containing a 50-year-old diary that has been sealed under orders of the Dean. Reading it, he learns the mysterious fate of Dr Haynes (Robert Hardy), an ambitious clergyman who desperately covets the role of Archdeacon, then occupied by the resilient Archdeacon Pulteney (Harold Bennett). Pulteney meets an untimely death and the diary ties his death with Haynes, a 17th-century carving on the cathedral choir stalls and a large black cat.
Hardy is uncharacteristically restrained here, bringing some grim humour to the early scenes as he watches, exasperated, as Pulteney keeps on going, thwarting his ambitions. Hardy was something of a devotee of ghost stories himself so his less hammy than usual turn may be a result of his reverence for the source material. It may also have something to do with writer/director Lawrence Gordon Clark, a former documentarian and architect of the A Ghost Story for Christmas strand who coaxes lovely turns from all involved. Bennett – still a year from becoming the doddery old “young Mr Grace” in sitcom Are You Being Served? (1972-1981) – makes for an endearingly crusty Pulteney while Thelma Barlow – best known as Mavis in venerable British television soap opera Coronation Street – is better than one might expect as Haynes’ sister Letitia. Clive Swift looked set to become a series regular, turning up again s Dr Black the following year in the second adaptation A Warning to the Curious but it would actually mark his last appearance.
The performances may all be first rate but it’s Clark who’s the real star of the show. His script is peppered with macabre little jokes (a jump cut from Puleteney’s fractured skull to Haynes cracking open his breakfast egg), seemingly throwaway but ultimately chilling snippets of dialogue and some genuinely unsettling moments of horror. The carving idly stroked by Haynes suddenly growing fur, a whispered voice asking “can I come in?” and a fantastically nasty clutching hand that creeps into shot to scratch Haynes’ face. Stuck with a budget of just £9,000, Clark makes it go a long way, making excellent use of Norwich Cathedral and its grounds, seemingly using natural lighting where possible, all lovingly captured on film by cameraman John McGlashan. Together they use light and shade in a way that seems completely alien to the over-lit look of most studio-bound British television of the time.
The Stalls of Barchester set out the Ghost Story Christmas‘ stall rather nicely. Chilling and humorous, it more than lives up to Simon Farquhar’s claim on the BFI website for it to be “a little miracle of television, a labour of love made on a tiny budget with skill and care.” The beautifully crafted script leaves us some wriggle room to wonder if what we’re seeing actually happened or whether it was merely the fanciful interpretation of Black, who recounts the entire tale as a reading from Haynes’ diaries.
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