Christmas should be about ghosts and I was really looking forward to this new BBC ghost story for Christmas. Mark Gattis has a love for the genre and much past form in this area and I think this is his best effort to date as a writer/director for this strand. At only half an hour it is still a slow burner but this works in its favour as it builds atmosphere subtly and brings a sense of creeping dread. It is well cast, Rory Kinnear is very watchable as a stuffy English academic and Robert Bathhurst has some of the best lines of the piece, well delivered, as a friend. Frances Barber manages to be both amusing and slightly sinister and Tommaso Di Vincenzo brings a chilling physicality to the denouement (though perhaps we didn't need to see the face of the ghost?).
Review of The Mezzotint
