The inspiration for the BBC's Ghost Story for Christmas strand was this earlier M.R. James adaptation made as part of the Omnibus series in 1968 (that Omnibus was typically a documentary series means that the story comes with an odd and unnecessary explanatory voiceover to kick it off). Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad is probably the best known and most highly regarded of the canon of James ghost stories and certainly the archetype of his take on the ghost genre. The conceit of an arrogant academic, an isolated coastal location and an ancient artefact that reveals to the protagonist a dark and scary world beyond his dismissive imagination, or variants on it, was used repeatedly by James and his imitators. The similar A Warning to the Curious was adapted as the second BBC Ghost Story for Christmas in 1972 and is the best James adaptation of the 70s series. This is the original, though, and remains the best of all. Whistle and I'll Come to You (a few words shed from the title for brevity's sake) was written and directed by Jonathan Miller, part of the Beyond the Fringe team with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Miller's comedy background can be seen in the speech patterns of Professor Parkin, whose incomprehensibly-mumble-for-six-words-and-then-enunciate-the-seventh cadences appear to be the inspiration for The Fast Show's Rowley Birkin. James' story features a smart, neat young man, but Miller's decision to make Parkin a messy, absent minded middle aged character more used to talking to himself than others serves well to further cut him off from everyone else. Michael Hordern, who played Parkin, had some previous haunting experience as the ghost of Jacob Marley opposite Alastair Sim's Scrooge and would go on to record a series of audiobooks of James stories. Here he throws himself impressively into a role where he is constantly on screen and much of his dialogue is with himself. As a director Miller makes an asset of the low budget and monochrome photography with lots of long takes and interesting angles, while the huge, flat beaches of the Norfolk coast make for the perfect creepy setting to suggest watching or following figures. A much more loosely adapted remake appeared in 2010 starring John Hurt and written by Neil Cross (Mama, the haunted house Doctor Who episode Hide). More tragically poignant than scary and not for James purists, it remains worth a look, but doesn't quite measure up to the original.
