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Adaptations Of M R James' Ghost Stories
If you want to know if any of M R James' ghost stories have been adapted for television or radio, the answer is a resounding yes! Many, many adaptations, not only on television and radio, but also film and stage. However, for now, we wish to focus on television adaptations.
Nine dramatizations of M R James' stories were included in the BBC's long-running television series A Ghost Story For Christmas. This programme was a strand of annual short British television films originally broadcast on BBC One from 1971 to 1978, and later revived in 2005 on BBC Four. The five stories adapted for the original broadcast on BBC One were The Stalls Of Barchester (aired 24 December 1971), A Warning To The Curious (aired 24 December 1972), Lost Hearts (aired 25 December 1973), The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas (aired 23 December 1974) and The Ash-tree (aired 23 December 1975). The remaining four stories adapted for the revival broadcast on BBC Four were A View From A Hill (aired 23 December 2005), Number 13 (aired 22 December 2006), Whistle And I'll Come To You (aired 24 December 2010) and The Tractate Middoth (aired 25 December 2013).
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By the way, the first adaptation of Whistle And I'll Come To You was made by the BBC in 1968, and broadcast as part of the BBC arts strand Omnibus, an arts-based BBC television documentary series. This adaptation was what inspired the BBC to produce A Ghost Story For Christmas; what was originally supposed to be a new yearly strand of television adaptations of M R James' stories, which included the heavily-revised 2010 version of Whistle And I'll Come To You. However, between 1976 and 1978, three non-M R James stories were added to the programme.
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Another M R James story Casting The Runes was adapted for Yorkshire Television's ITV Playhouse, first broadcast on the ITV network channel on 24 April 1979.
In 1975, Yorkshire Television also produced a twenty-minute adaptation of M R James' Mr Humphreys And His Inheritance as part of their television series Music Scene. Intended for school children, the short film was made, not to scare but to educate; to illustrate how music could be used to create different moods on the screen. |
It is common knowledge that many of M R James' ghostly tales were written initially as Christmas Eve entertainments to be read aloud to friends in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales; that is to say, the ritual telling of a ghost story, late at night, by the fireside, on Christmas Eve. Having appeared successfully on stage in a play during his university years, his ability as an actor was also apparent whenever he read his ghost stories, enabling him to bring the stories to life. This concept was used by the BBC in 2000 in a short television series Ghost Stories For Christmas (with Christopher Lee), a partially-dramatized production. British actor Christopher Lee, in the role of Montague Rhodes James, Don and Provost, was filmed narrating stories to a group of students in a candle-lit room in King's College at the University Of Cambridge in the setting of almost a hundred years ago. There were four adaptations in all for this series which were The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral, The Ash-tree, Number 13 and A Warning To The Curious.
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Prior to this series, there was yet an earlier BBC production of partially-dramatized readings, which were transmitted under the title Classic Ghost Stories (by M R James). Broadcast on BBC2 in December 1986, the series of readings were done by British actor Robert Powell, although he did not have a live audience for his readings as Christopher Lee had. The five stories used for this production were The Mezzotint, The Ash-Tree, Wailing Well, Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad and The Rose Garden.
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