Mark Gatiss, the co-creator of Sherlock (who also played Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, on the show), has adapted Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “Lot No. 249” into a television special.
According to Deadline, Gatiss’s adaptation will be his latest Christmas ghost story special to air at the BBC. Kit Harington (a.k.a. Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, pictured above looking sad) will star as a young University of Oxford student named Abercrombie Smith.
“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,” Gatiss told Deadline. “‘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.”
Doyle’s “Lot No. 249” was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1892. The story follows Abercrombie (Harrington) and Egyptology student Edward Bellingham, the latter of whom appears to have some ties to a re-animated mummy. Freddie Fox (Slow Horses) co-stars with Harrington as Bellingham, and the larger cast includes Colin Ryan (Boundless), John Heffernan (Dracula), James Swanton (Stopmotion), Jonathan Rigby (Father Brown) and Andrew Horton (Slotherhouse).
The special is set to air on BBC Two this Christmas; no news yet on if/when it will make its way to the U.S.
