'A Ghost Story For Christmas' 2024 To Adapt 'Man-Size in Marble'
Éanna Hardwicke as Jack Lorimer, Phoebe Horn as Laura Lorimer, and Mawaan Rizwan as Dr. Zubin in 'Woman of Stone'
BBC Studios
One of the U.K.’s long-standing traditions is telling ghost stories at Christmas. The most famous, of course, is A Christmas Carol, in which a rich man is terrorized into paying his staff a living wage. However, Dickens was merely following a tradition older than he was; Victorian writers of all stripes, including Arthur Conan Doyle, regularly published horror stories to scare people for the holiday season. (This is partly why it took until the 21st century before the U.K. got into Halloween.) Since 2018, Mark Gatiss has been adapting these old-school Ghost Stories for the BBC to air at Christmas, and 2024 will be no exception, with Woman of Stone prepped to air in December 2024.
Gatiss began this project in 2013 with The Tractate Middoth, taking over from writers like Neil Cross, who has sporadically adapted these traditional tales for the BBC since 2004. The series went on hiatus after that, with Sherlock filling the gap, until 2018, when Gatiss returned to Ghost Stories with The Dead Room. Since then, except for the 2020 pandemic year, Gatiss has faithfully adapted a new short story every year, at first running through the best-known of M.R. James’ famous Christmas ghost stories from the interwar period before turning to Conan Dolye’s Lot No. 249 in 2023.
For 2024, Gatiss will adapt Edith Nesbitt’s famous 1893 story Man-Sized in Marble, rechristened Woman of Stone for modern viewers. In a statement accompanying the announcement, Gatiss revealed he’d long wanted to adapt the story, as Nesbitt’s tale was “the very first ghost story I ever read!”
Here's the new addition's logline:
The spooky Christmas special follows Victorian newlyweds Jack and Laura. The couple is settling into a small cottage in a quiet village when their idyll is overshadowed by the superstitious warnings of their housekeeper, Mrs. Dorman, and the legend of the village church’s tomb effigies – a pair of marble knights who are said to rise from their slabs on Christmas Eve. Jack dismisses this as mere folklore. But as the fateful night draws near, he feels drawn to the church, leaving Laura at home, all alone.
The series will star Éanna Hardwicke (The Sixth Commandment) as Jack Lorimer, Phoebe Horn (The Motive and the Cue) as Laura Lorimer, Celia Imrie (The Thursday Murder Club) as Edith Nesbit, Monica Dolan (Sherwood) as Mrs Dorman and Mawaan Rizwan (Juice) as Dr. Zubin.
Gatiss will once again write and direct the TV film, his seventh A Ghost Story for Christmas special. Last year’s installment, Lot No. 249, was the best-performing show on BBC Two on Christmas Eve, drawing 1.75 million viewers. (It also came to BritBox; no word yet if Woman of Stone will follow suit or go straight to PBS Passport, where select stations have Gattis' whole set. A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone is produced by Adorable Media for BBC Two and BBC iPlayer. BBC Arts commissioned it with Isibéal Ballance producing for Adorable Media.
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone is expected to air and stream on Christmas Eve on BBC Two. Hopefully, it will pick up an American distributor before that.
