After the success of A View from a Hill, the revived A Ghost Story for Christmas returned the following year with another M. R. James adaptation, Number 13. Unfortunately, the script writing and directing team of Peter Harness and Luke Watson did not, with Justin Hopper providing the screenplay and Pier Wilkie - who produced the previous episode - behind the camera. And the result is a bit disappointing.
Hopper's script relocates James' story from Denmark to a generic English town, losing much of the richness of the original story in the process; what is left is a pared down story about a mysterious room in an old hotel, which is ends up feeling like a generic attempt to mimic the original series' M. R. James adaptations, which is probably the case. Unfortunately, the result is that the first three quarters of the episode are actually a bit dull, with a plot rendered slight being dragged out in an attempt to intrigue that could have been better achieved with greater brevity. It doesn't help that the protagonist doesn't engage the audience's sympathies: intellectually proud academics are a stable of James' stories, but never before in A Ghost Story for Christmas has one been written to be as utterly obnoxious as Professor Anderson.
Having said all of that, Number 13 is not all bad. During the last quarter, Wilkie's direction and the editing combine to raise the hairs of the back of the neck from the moment that Anderson sees a remorseless shadow creep across his wall and the door to Number 13 finally opens. Unusually for an M. R. James story, Anderson survives his brush with the macabre relatively unscathed, but it still makes for an unsettling conclusion when the remains of the missing Cambridge academic mentioned at the start are discovered beneath the floorboards.
The casting also works: whilst Anderson is unlikeable, Greg Wise gives a believable performance in the role, and the episode also benefits from the return of David Burke after the previous year's A View from a Hill, this time accompanied by his son Tom, who's drunken and crass Edward Jenkins works well. The great Paul Freeman also appears as the cathedral librarian. In keeping with the program's traditions, we also get some handsome location filming in Winchester Cathedral, plus some nice touches from Wilkie including the bizarre but strikingly macabre presence of Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" in Anderson's hotel room.
Overall, Number 13 could and should have been better, but it still manages some chills and makes an effective seasonal ghost story. How popular it was at the time I'm unsure, but in the event it would be another four years before it was followed by another one, and that would see A Ghost Story for Christmas revisiting its earliest roots...
Hopper's script relocates James' story from Denmark to a generic English town, losing much of the richness of the original story in the process; what is left is a pared down story about a mysterious room in an old hotel, which is ends up feeling like a generic attempt to mimic the original series' M. R. James adaptations, which is probably the case. Unfortunately, the result is that the first three quarters of the episode are actually a bit dull, with a plot rendered slight being dragged out in an attempt to intrigue that could have been better achieved with greater brevity. It doesn't help that the protagonist doesn't engage the audience's sympathies: intellectually proud academics are a stable of James' stories, but never before in A Ghost Story for Christmas has one been written to be as utterly obnoxious as Professor Anderson.
Having said all of that, Number 13 is not all bad. During the last quarter, Wilkie's direction and the editing combine to raise the hairs of the back of the neck from the moment that Anderson sees a remorseless shadow creep across his wall and the door to Number 13 finally opens. Unusually for an M. R. James story, Anderson survives his brush with the macabre relatively unscathed, but it still makes for an unsettling conclusion when the remains of the missing Cambridge academic mentioned at the start are discovered beneath the floorboards.
The casting also works: whilst Anderson is unlikeable, Greg Wise gives a believable performance in the role, and the episode also benefits from the return of David Burke after the previous year's A View from a Hill, this time accompanied by his son Tom, who's drunken and crass Edward Jenkins works well. The great Paul Freeman also appears as the cathedral librarian. In keeping with the program's traditions, we also get some handsome location filming in Winchester Cathedral, plus some nice touches from Wilkie including the bizarre but strikingly macabre presence of Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" in Anderson's hotel room.
Overall, Number 13 could and should have been better, but it still manages some chills and makes an effective seasonal ghost story. How popular it was at the time I'm unsure, but in the event it would be another four years before it was followed by another one, and that would see A Ghost Story for Christmas revisiting its earliest roots...