October is here, and although that means that the spooky season is in full swing, it also delivers the first starry glint of the festive season on the horizon. Christmas is a time for tradition, especially on television, as global viewers sit down to watch their favorite returning shows at the most wonderful time of the year. For viewers across the pond in the UK, for the past nine years, this has meant settling down with a hot drink and catching the latest Ghost Story for Christmas on the BBC.
This chilling winter special dates all the way back to 1971, when it originally ran until 1978, and was directed almost entirely by Lawrence Gordon Clark. 2005 marked the return of the Ghost Story for Christmas, although intermittently, until the co-writer of Sherlock and Doctor Who contributor Mark Gatiss revived the series into a BBC staple, which has now aired every year since 2018's The Dead Room, which was the series' first original story in 40 years.
Recent installments have included adaptations of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story Lot No. 249, E. Nesbit's Man-Size In Marble, and, most recently, E.F. Benson's The Room in the Tower, with this year's set to be a spooky rendition of The Bride’s Chamber, one of the darkest stories in the acclaimed catalog of the great Charles Dickens. Thanks to an exclusive from Deadline, we now know that this upcoming festive episode will mark a reunion between Gatiss and Martin Freeman, who famously portrayed Dr John Watson alongside Benedict Cumberbatch's titular detective.
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week.
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you.
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
Also joining the cast for the latest Ghost Story for Christmas is the veteran British favorite Jim Broadbent, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor back in 2002. He and Freeman are joined by the likes of Adrian Scarborough (Gavin & Stacey), Joe Armstrong (The Hollow Crown), India Fowler (Fear Street: Prom Queen) and Lewis Shepherd (Dear England). The BBC's synopsis teases:
"An inn with no name, an eccentric landlord and a lone traveller with a strangely familiar appearance. As he settles into his room for the night, the traveller is visited by an uncanny man in black, with a story to tell..."
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