Between 1971 and 1978 the BBC used to dramatise a ghost story every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas", and the first five entries in the series were all based upon tales by that great master of the genre, M. R. James. The tradition has been revived in recent years, and nine more Christmas ghost stories have appeared at irregular intervals since 2005. All of these, apart from "The Dead Room" in 2018 and "Lot No. 249" in 2023, are based upon stories by James.
"A View from a Hill" was the first episode in the revived series, broadcast at Christmas 2005. Dr Fanshawe, an academic archaeologist, is invited to the country manor house of Squire Richards, in order to catalogue and value the Squire's archaeological collection which is to be sold off to pay debts. He also takes the opportunity to carry out his own explorations of the area, and borrows a pair of binoculars from the Squire, his own having been broken in an accident.
Fanshawe discovers that the binoculars have the strange property of being able to show him how a place looked in the past. In particular, they reveal to him a local abbey, not how it is in the present- a ruin- but how it was in the sixteenth century, before the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. From conversations with the Squire and his butler, Patten, Fanshawe learns that the binoculars were made by a craftsman named Baxter, now dead, who was deeply unpopular with the local people and had a reputation for being a necromancer. He begins to fear that Baxter may have used dark forces to make the mysterious binoculars and that it was these forces which led to Baxter's death. (He was found dead on the sinister Gallows Hill, a one-time place of execution).
I have not seen all of the twenty-first century "Ghost Stories for Christmas", but of those I have seen I would rank this one as my favourite, along with "The Mezzotint". Strangely enough, neither of these are really among James's most scary stories on the printed page, but those who adapted them for television- Peter Harness here and Mark Gatiss in the case of "The Mezzotint"- realised that certain changes needed to be made to make them work in the new medium.
For much of its length, "A View from a Hill" keeps fairly closely to James's story although it makes a couple of minor changes such as updating it from the Edwardian period to the mid twentieth century. In the original story, Fanshawe was visiting Richards as a friend, and there was no mention of Richards being in debt. As with "The Mezzotint", the most important changes come at the end, with the protagonist realising that he himself is in danger from the dark forces which he has unwittingly unleashed. (In the original, the binoculars lose their power when Fanshawe takes them into a church, with the implication that the holiness of the place has overcome the evil they once contained).
Credit also needs to be given to Luke Watson for his skill as the director in conjuring up an atmosphere of unease, uncertainty and dread without ever showing us anything too explicit. This is an excellent "Ghost Story for Christmas". 8/10
Some goofs. The ancient abbey revealed to Fanshawe through the binoculars is in the Gothic style but is crowned with a large, elaborate dome. No mediaeval Gothic building in England would ever have had a dome. (In James's story it had a tower topped with four pinnacles). The story is set in the Chiltern Hills and Thames Valley. On a couple of occasions we see a red kite, a bird which at the time the story is set could be found in Wales but nowhere in England. (They have been reintroduced into parts of England and Scotland from 1989 onwards).
"A View from a Hill" was the first episode in the revived series, broadcast at Christmas 2005. Dr Fanshawe, an academic archaeologist, is invited to the country manor house of Squire Richards, in order to catalogue and value the Squire's archaeological collection which is to be sold off to pay debts. He also takes the opportunity to carry out his own explorations of the area, and borrows a pair of binoculars from the Squire, his own having been broken in an accident.
Fanshawe discovers that the binoculars have the strange property of being able to show him how a place looked in the past. In particular, they reveal to him a local abbey, not how it is in the present- a ruin- but how it was in the sixteenth century, before the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. From conversations with the Squire and his butler, Patten, Fanshawe learns that the binoculars were made by a craftsman named Baxter, now dead, who was deeply unpopular with the local people and had a reputation for being a necromancer. He begins to fear that Baxter may have used dark forces to make the mysterious binoculars and that it was these forces which led to Baxter's death. (He was found dead on the sinister Gallows Hill, a one-time place of execution).
I have not seen all of the twenty-first century "Ghost Stories for Christmas", but of those I have seen I would rank this one as my favourite, along with "The Mezzotint". Strangely enough, neither of these are really among James's most scary stories on the printed page, but those who adapted them for television- Peter Harness here and Mark Gatiss in the case of "The Mezzotint"- realised that certain changes needed to be made to make them work in the new medium.
For much of its length, "A View from a Hill" keeps fairly closely to James's story although it makes a couple of minor changes such as updating it from the Edwardian period to the mid twentieth century. In the original story, Fanshawe was visiting Richards as a friend, and there was no mention of Richards being in debt. As with "The Mezzotint", the most important changes come at the end, with the protagonist realising that he himself is in danger from the dark forces which he has unwittingly unleashed. (In the original, the binoculars lose their power when Fanshawe takes them into a church, with the implication that the holiness of the place has overcome the evil they once contained).
Credit also needs to be given to Luke Watson for his skill as the director in conjuring up an atmosphere of unease, uncertainty and dread without ever showing us anything too explicit. This is an excellent "Ghost Story for Christmas". 8/10
Some goofs. The ancient abbey revealed to Fanshawe through the binoculars is in the Gothic style but is crowned with a large, elaborate dome. No mediaeval Gothic building in England would ever have had a dome. (In James's story it had a tower topped with four pinnacles). The story is set in the Chiltern Hills and Thames Valley. On a couple of occasions we see a red kite, a bird which at the time the story is set could be found in Wales but nowhere in England. (They have been reintroduced into parts of England and Scotland from 1989 onwards).