In short: The Mezzotint (2021)

Warning: there will be mild spoilers about the changes the adaptation makes to the tale!

Between the Wars. Academic Williams (Rory Kinnear and his magical facial hair) is sent a mezzotint engraving on approval. On first look, it seems to be not particularly exciting, but whenever Williams or others take a new look at it, it changes in increasingly disturbing and grotesque ways. At the same time, Williams learns some somewhat surprising facts about his family history.

As usual with Mark Gatiss, this half hour adaptation of a Monty James tale as a Ghost Story for Christmas for the BBC has found as much hate as praise (both pretty much from the circles you’d expect them to come from). I’m completely on the praising side this time around, and see this as Gatiss’s best James adaptation yet. It’s an effort that changes exactly the parts of the story that need changing for better dramatic effect, the original tale being one of James’s less exciting stories in need of a bit more punch on the haunting side as well as emotionally for its climax, which Gatiss provides in an efficient and logical manner. Then there are a few bits and bobs added to pull the story a smidgen away from the purely male academic area where James’s stories – as well as their author – dwelt. For this, Gatiss adds some dialogue about women coming to academia, something that actually must have been talked about rather a lot in 1923 in these circles, and puts a bit of organic diversity in by casting Nikesh Patel as Nisbet and adding an important female character (via a wonderful performance by Frances Barber). It’s all very efficiently, effectively and intelligently done, in a way that roots the tale in its contemporary reality, a technique James himself found very important in ghost stories.

Most important, obviously, is how well Gatiss has become at directing this sort thing. There are so many clever and atmospheric uses of Dutch angles, extreme close-ups and sharp editing on display, one thinks Lawrence Gordon-Clarke should have been proud of how creepy a tale mostly about men staring at a picture dramatically can get when filmed right. Of course, the men and women doing the staring here are fantastic too, suggesting great degrees of personality and emotion in a very short time.

And hey, Gatiss also adds a nice example of the Jamesian Wallop (term courtesy of the great M.R. James podcast A Podcast to the Curious) to the climax that’s not afraid to do a bit of showing when the telling’s through.