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A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Mezzotint review – a glittering half-hour nugget

You’ll be in thrall to Mark Gatiss’s smart, snappy and utterly hammy ghost story within seconds. What a creepy Christmas gift to us all

Oh, the warm, expansive joy to be had from a chilly, compact ghost story! And A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Mezzotint (BBC Two), an MR James short story adapted by aficionado Mark Gatiss into a glittering half-hour nugget, is an absolute treat. These two masters of their forms can nudge even the most committed sceptic into willingly suspending their disbelief for a tight 30 minutes, especially when the plot runs like clockwork and is as stuffed with actors as a stocking is with gifts.

There is Rory Kinnear as Edward Williams, the curator of a university art museum who spends most of his days politely declining offers of unsuitable Delftware from local ladies. We are in Victorian Times so he has a Victorian Moustache and sometimes plays Victorian Golf, wearing Victorian Plus Fours. His friend Binks (John Hopkins) likewise (I assume there was a terrific two-for-one offer on in the BBC costume department). A dealer sends Williams an unremarkable mezzotint engraving of an unidentified manor house somewhere in Sussex or Essex – the label is torn.

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