The Room in the Tower: A Ghost Story for Christmas Review – Tobias Menzies is perfect in Mark Gatiss’s spooky tale | TV and radio

IIt is a truth universally acknowledged that a family gathered around a raucous Christmas display must be in need of a ghost story. So, since 1968 (or a couple of years earlier, depending on whether you count the intro to Whistle and I’ll Come to You), directed by Jonathan Miller – and who am I to tell you no?), the BBC has sporadically offered one in the form of the Ghost Story for Christmas series. These days, it’s become an annual event, presented as a half-hour adaptation by Mark Gatiss of a spooky short story from the Victorian or Edwardian archives, giving us some shuddering distraction and providing some fine actors with lucrative jobs of a not-so-stressful kind in the run-up to Christmas.

To start, the recent reboot of the series has mostly included adaptations of Gatiss’s greatest love, Mr. James, but there’s also, as befits Sherlock’s co-creator, one by Arthur Conan Doyle (installment #249). Then, last year, it was adapted from a story by – yes – E. Nesbitt.Which-E-Nesbit From the days before she earned royalties from The Railway Children, Psammead wasn’t even a gleam in Edith’s eye.

This year it’s EF Benson’s turn. A prolific writer, Benson was best known as the author of the Mapp & Lucia books, but he often wrote what he called “scary stories” for magazines. Gatiss selected The Tower Room, written and published in 1912, and reset it (at least partially) during World War II.

Roger Winstanley (Tobias Menzies, an understated actor who always makes you lean in and is perfectly cast in a part consisting largely of whispered dread) makes stoic small talk with a stranger, Verity (Nancy Carroll), as they take cover in a tube station during an air raid. Are you dreaming, he asks her suddenly. She does. “Did you ever check?” We return to his childhood when he begins the story for which “I can find no explanation at all.”

Since he was a schoolboy, we hear that Winstanley has had a recurring dream/nightmare when he arrives at classmate Jack Stone’s house and is taken into the garden to have tea with Jack’s mother Julia (Joanna Lumley) in black, his father and two other relatives. There is complete silence until Julia says to him: “Jack will show you to your room. I gave you the room in the tower.” Young Roger is filled with inexplicable horror but there is no escape. Jack takes him to the room, and leaves him there – and he always wakes up before he discovers the horrific fate that awaits him.

In the end, Roger told the truth, a slightly different version left behind: Julia no longer existed in the body. However, her voice remained, and the same frightening instructions remained, and the rest of the hated dream continued to its usual end.

In the final dream, Roger joins his jovial friend John Clinton (Ben Mansfield) for a game of tennis and John invites him back to his house for tea. guess what? Yes indeed, they have driven to Roger’s nightmare house. He rallies when he sees that the family gathered on the lawn for tea is not Jack Stone’s family, but a more cheerful and energetic group, surrounded by welcoming guests. All is well until the Matriarch (this time played by Polly Walker) announces that – guess what again! Those of you who already remember that “Jack” is a nickname for “John” will be up front (I had to look it up, and if you want to escape the festivities at any point in this exhausting season, Google it and give yourself 10 minutes of etymological satisfaction). But, yeah, the line actually comes through. Jack will show him to his room. I put it in the room in the tower.

Benson’s twist, plus Gatiss’s further turning of the screw (although we should save that description until it gets to Henry James), rounds off the atmospheric half-hour nicely – although you could argue that we’re now entering horror territory rather than ghost story territory; If you are gathering for a family viewing, this may alienate the youngest members. Again, like a harmless cousin around the Christmas table, you wouldn’t miss Gatiss’s ghost story if it wasn’t there, but it’s always nice to see it again.