Show Notes
Hold on to your mummy! This episode Mike and Will discuss Mark Gatiss’s recent Ghost Story for Christmas TV adaptation Lot 249, as well as the Arthur Conan Doyle short story it is based on.
Show notes:
Watch it online! (BBC iPlayer)
If you are in the UK you can watch it on BBC iPlayer until the end of 2024. If you are outside the UK, you may be able to watch if you have a Britbox subscription.
Read the original story (www.gutenberg.org)
You can read the original story on Project Gutenberg.
Filming location (Wikipedia)
Almost all of Lot 249 was filmed at Rothamsted Manor in Hertfordshire.
The cast (IMDB)
Find out more about the cast of Lot 249 at IMDB.com.
Egyptomania (britannica.com)
Lot 249 reflects the Victorian obsession with everything to do with ancient Egypt. This story was set in 1884, two years after the Anglo-Egyptian war, a conflict which perhaps had an influence on the tone of this story.
Victorian garrotting panics (wikipedia)
The Victorian fear of being randomly garrotted is reflected in the reaction to a mummy attack in Lot 249.
Sidney Paget’s illustrations of Sherlock Holmes (www.arthur-conan-doyle.com)
The character of ‘The Friend’ in Gatiss’s adaptation is clearly Sherlock Holmes. If the dialogue doesn’t give it away, his appearance bears unmistakable similarity to Sherlock Holmes in the classic Strand Magazine illustrations by Sidney Paget, particularly this one.
Tales from the Darkside (youtube.com)
Lot 249 was featured in the 1990 comedy horror anthology Tales from the Darkside. Starring Christian Slater and Steve Buscemi, the scene in which Smith finally confronts Bellingham is on Youtube, and makes quite a watch!
More from A Podcast to the Curious - The M.R. James Podcast
This episode Mike and Will examine Curfew by Lucy M. Boston, a childhood tale of haunted bells, unearthed coffins and post-Jamesian highjinx aplenty.
M.R. James said that sex had no place in a ghost story. But was he right? This episode we attempt to answer this question and more, as we cover The Nature of the Evidence by May Sinclair, a tale from 1923 about a couple who just want to enjoy their wedding night. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, yes.
This episode, Mike and Will grab their literary toboggans and gallop joyously out into the snow, only to be hit in the face by a terrifying fictional snowball in the form of Louisa Baldwin’s The Real and the Counterfeit!
Who would win in a fight between a man and a bed? Find the answer to this question and more in our new episode on The Weird of the Walfords by Louisa Baldwin! Also, if you like emotionally-repressed Victorian husbands, you will not leave disappointed.
This episode we speak with two experts to better understand Eleanor Scott and her story Randall’s Round, Dr Vicky Margree and Prof Dan Orrells. We discuss what’s known about Eleanor Scott, her time at Oxford University in the early 1900s and the role of gender, folklore and imperialism in her writing.