Mark Gatiss To Adapt Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘Lot No. 249’ As Christmas Ghost Story Starring Kit Harington & Freddie Fox
Master of the macabre Mark Gatiss is coming back this Christmas with a new ghost story for the BBC, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘Lot No. 249’. It will be accompanied by a docuseries from Lucy Worsley which investigates Conan Doyle’s love/hate relationship with his creation, Sherlock Holmes.
Based on Conan Doyle’s short story, ‘Sherlock’ co-creator Mark Gatiss keeps up his tradition of writing and directing a ghost story for Christmas. This is the first time Gatiss has adapted a Conan Doyle horror story for television. The upcoming story revolves around a group of Oxford students, one of whom undertakes research into the secrets of Ancient Egypt which become the talk of the college.
“It’s a serious delight for me to delve once again into the brilliant work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this time for the Christmas Ghost story,” comments Gatiss. “‘Lot No.249’ is a personal favourite and is the grand-daddy (or should that be Mummy?) of a particular kind of end of Empire chiller: a ripping yarn packed with ghastly scares and who-knows-what lurking in the Victorian closet…”
Mark Gatiss will be adapting the story, which is produced by Isibéal Ballance for Adorable Media. Kit Harington (Game Of Thrones, The Eternals, Gunpowder) and Freddie Fox (Slow Horses, House of the Dragon, The Crown) will star.
This will joined by a three-part docuseries ‘Killing Sherlock’, from historian, author, and presenter, Lucy Worsley. Lucy unearths Sherlock’s origins in Conan Doyle’s early life as a medical student, unpicking his early stories and revealing the dark underbelly of late Victorian Britain – from drug use to true crime. She explores Doyle’s growing disenchantment with his detective creation and desire to distance himself from Sherlock, taking on the role of detective himself, in one of the most important legal cases of the 20th century; and investigates the darkness of his later stories, mirroring the reality of Conan Doyle’s life after the loss of his eldest son, his turn to spiritualism and declining public appeal and spat with a very famous magician. Sherlock Holmes, by contrast, found a life beyond his author, on stage and screen.
“I have had a LIFE-LONG CRUSH on Sherlock Holmes, so it was the biggest pleasure imaginable to explore his life, death and resurrection,” said Worsley. “While exploring his life and times, I also got a real and sometimes troubling insight into manliness, Empire and Victorian values. I find his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, to be a complex, contradictory and endlessly fascinating character.”
‘Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle’ is a BBC Studios Specialist Factual production for BBC Two, BBC iPlayer and PBS. The producers are Rachel Jardine and Laura Blount, the series producer is Linda Sands and the executive producer is Amanda Lyon. The commissioning editor for BBC Arts is Mark Bell. Zara Frankel is executive in charge for PBS.
‘Lot No. 249’ will air over Christmas 2023 on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer. ‘Killing Sherlock’ does not yet have an air date.
