The Signalman

 "You! Down below!"

By 1976, it seems, the BBC had decided to move the focus of their Ghost Stories for Christmas annual tradition away from the tales of M.R. James, this time adapting a short story from the later career of Charles Dickens. The visual style and atmosphere, nevertheless, are just as eerie and just as full of foreboding. The change of authorial style is, oddly enough, not strongly felt as the visual tropes of Lawrence Gordon Clark's direction encompass us... eerie silences, creepy yet subtle use of sound, light, voice and facial expressions to evoke unease within these liminal spaces.

I won't repeat the plot, but the whole things is a subtle yet very rreal building up of tension as we are ledft in no doubt, albeit quietly, that dread approaches and that this world, in the depths of the night, is no place for reason. The twist at the end, and the horrifying supernatural sight, are well and truly earned. And the unease has an interestingly philosophical timbre to it- this Victorian signalman is thoughtful and nuanced.

Denholm Elliott, as though it needs saying, is superb. This is as good as any of its immediate predecessors and, indeed, one of the best such stories made by the BBC. M.R. James does not have a monopoly...