The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

 "Christianity isa ratiional system of belief, Peter."

Once again we have one of the BBC's once annual Christmas ghost stories based on various short stories by M.R. James, this one from 1974. And my God, it's superb. This is the BBC, so the early Victorian period with its bonnets and mutton chops is evoked to perfection. The deliberately slow pace gives us tension of a kind that the television of recent decades cannot provide.

And at the centre of it all is a masterfdul performance from Michael Bryant as the calm, rational, scientific Revd Dr. Justin Somerton, an Oxford don of the very old school, dismissive of superstition- he puts short shrift to a couple of seance mongers-

He is, at first, far too rational to be taken in by the enthusiastic young Peter'd enthusiasm for the buried treasure on a 15th century abbot, rumoured to be an alchemist carried away by the Devil. Yet events ptroceed fascinatingly and inexorably to his temptation and doom, the Abbot and all things supernatural seen only in yerrifying glimpses.

Of all the M'R. James adaptations of the '70s... this may well be the best I've seen so far.