Martin Freeman and Jim Broadbent will lead this year’s BBC Christmas ghost story, an adaptation of a Charles Dickens tale that its adapter calls a rarity. A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Bride’s Chamber will air this Christmas on BBC Two and iPlayer, the corporation confirmed Monday. It is the ninth installment in Mark Gatiss’s holiday ghost story series, and he adapted and directed it. Adorable Media produced the film.
The source is “The Ghost in the Bride’s Chamber,” published in 1858 and counted among Dickens’s darkest stories. It follows a spurned, vengeful suitor who manipulates a young woman into marriage to claim her fortune. A summary of the film describes an inn with no name, an eccentric landlord and a lone traveler with a strangely familiar appearance.
“It’s unusual to find a Dickens rarity, but this is it,” Gatiss said. The supporting cast includes Adrian Scarborough, Joe Armstrong, India Fowler and Lewis Shepherd. The BBC has not said which actor plays which role.
The casting brings together veterans of Gatiss’s earlier work. Freeman and Gatiss co-starred in Sherlock, which Gatiss co-created, with Gatiss playing Mycroft Holmes and Freeman playing Dr. John Watson. Gatiss and Broadbent appeared together in the BBC thriller London Spy. Both also had roles in Game of Thrones but never shared a scene.
BBC Arts commissioned the film, and the corporation frames it as part of a December schedule built around Dickens. The programming ties in to the National Year of Reading. Mark Bell, commissioning editor for BBC Arts, called the ghost story an essential dish on the festive TV menu for viewers who like a spine-tingling tale on a winter night.
The previous Gatiss entry adapted E.F. Benson. The series has become a fixture of the BBC’s holiday lineup, and the Dickens source offers it a new kind of material: a Victorian horror story built around marriage and money. The BBC has not set a broadcast date.
