Long before the announcement of The Tractate Middoth it's been apparent that Mark Gatiss is a big fan of the ghost story for Christmas. The finest episode of The League of Gentleman was the genuinely disturbing Christmas special modelled after the classic Amicus portmanteau horrors, while the first episode of his many dabblings with Doctor Who threw in an actual Christmas ghost encounter for Dickens himself in the form of career-Dickens Simon Callow. It came as no surprise then when, after the BBC aired a couple of fairly decent M.R. James Christmas ghost stories in the mid-00s, they decided to commission an original script from Gatiss: Crooked House. Like the League of Gentleman special, Crooked House takes the form of a portmanteau of three stories linked by a frame narrative, in this case a museum curator (Gatiss) tells Lee Ingleby's Ben about the morbid history of Geap Manor, the Tudor home of an heirless aristocrat with an interest in dark magic. It was originally aired as three separate episodes in the days leading up to Christmas 2008 and then as a complete film, which is where it works best. The first two stories - The Wainscoting, set in the Georgian period of failed economic speculation and the South Sea Bubble, and Something Old, involving a Roaring Twenties party of Bright Young Things - are affectionate pastiches of the style and turns of phrase of their era. Though the former, in particular, is a creative ghost concept anchored by a strong performance from veteran TV actor Philip Jackson. Andy Nyman, who appears here in a supporting role, would go on to create the acclaimed stage play Ghost Stories with Gatiss' former League of Gentleman writing partner Jeremy Dyson (author of The Haunted Book). It is the final, contemporary set, story The Knocker that provides Crooked House with some honest to goodness scary stuff, however, as Ben finds Geap Manor's dark past reaching out to him through the house's old door knocker. There is less pastiche-y fun here and more of a truly creepy conclusion.
