Twenty years ago, viewers tuned in to watch the very first televised episode of Doctor Who penned by Mark Gatiss – a writer and actor who was, at the time (and to some, perhaps still), best known for his work on the macabre cult comedy series The League of Gentlemen. The episode, titled “The Unquiet Dead”, saw Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor not only do battle with ghosts in Victorian London on Christmas Eve, but also meet with the writer of the most beloved Yuletide ghost story of them all – Charles Dickens (played superbly by Simon Callow).
Of course, little did we know back in 2005 that Doctor Who would not be the only beloved BBC series that Gatiss helped raise from the dead, and certainly not the only one to be associated with festive viewing; beginning with 2013’s “The Tractate Middoth”, Gatiss resurrected an old Christmastide tradition at the Beeb – the Ghost Story for Christmas. The original run of these annual spooky television plays was directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, with installments often being adapted from the works of beloved ghost story writer M.R. James.
Both Clark and Gatiss’s incarnations of the Christmas Ghost Story feature plenty of Who alumni, both in front of and behind the camera, and there’s even a new instalment set to air this Christmas eve starring Joanna Lumley (who has herself played the Doctor, but that’s another story for another article). However, for my ‘Christmas Special’ edition of “Outside the Blue Box”, I decided to dig a little deeper and uncover a Who-adjacent winter chiller that readers may not have come across before; as such, I bring you the gift of what is widely regarded as the direct precursor to Gatiss’s official run of Ghost Stories for Christmas – I invite you all to step inside the Crooked House (2008).
Broadcast in the days leading up to the Christmas of 2008 (a year when Who would also dabble in a little Victorian gothic for its Christmas special, “The Next Doctor”), Crooked House is a three-part miniseries (or a 90-minute TV movie, depending on which version you watch) which tells the story – or, more accurately, stories – of Geap Manor, a house plagued by histories of bloodshed, misfortune, and tragedy. Our storyteller is the curator of a small local-history museum, played by Gatiss himself, who relates these tales of terror to a young schoolteacher named Ben (Lee Ingleby, who voiced librarian Samson Griffin in the Big Finish Who story “Terror Firma”).
Crooked House is a very solid, creepy piece of televisual horror, and one which certainly bears revisiting.
Click the image at the bottom of the screen to watch the Crooked House
The reason for Ben’s visit to the museum, as with many a classic ghost story, is a troublesome antique – a rather strange-looking door knocker which once belonged to the aforementioned haunted habitation; the curator, who either knows more than he should about the dark deeds committed at the house or is simply just on the autism spectrum (probably both – which would make the character very relatable from my point-of-view), decides that this is the perfect opportunity to pull out his giant file of research on Geap Manor and tell as many tales of the unexpected as he can before Ben has to leave and go to his job, which should really be a lesser priority than sitting down and listening to ghost stories in the back of a museum. These scenes make for a delightfully cozy wraparound to each of the episodes’ main stories, not least because Gatiss’s curator offers to brew a cup of tea for Ben in-between each reading.
Crooked House’s first episode, “The Wainscoting”, is the most Jamesian of the bunch – a 1700s-set tale of the malice of inanimate objects. Here, the curator tells the tale of Bloxham (Philip Jackson), a rich man who made his money through exploiting and swindling others in the world of trading and commerce; having recently bought the notorious Geap Manor, Bloxham finds himself troubled by strange nightly noises coming from behind the new wainscoting (wooden interior panelling) that he had installed upon moving in. It’s a delightfully morbid work of historical horror, and possibly my favourite of the three ghost stories that Crooked House has to offer, not least because of the very nasty (and location-specific) reveal as to why the wood that the contractors sourced is so troublesome. This episode features an appearance from Beth Goddard, who played the sinister Sister Helena in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode “Eye of the Gorgon”, as Mrs. Glanville – a grieving widow who finds herself and her children forced out onto the street after one of Bloxham’s schemes leads to her husband’s imprisonment and death.
Episode two, “Something Old”, skips forward in time to 1927, where an engagement party hosted by the young new owners of Geap Manor draws the ire of a vengeful ghostly bride whose own wedding night ended in her tragic death. This story is the slowest-paced of the three, yet its unsettling imagery is undeniably striking; the phantom bride in this episode is arguably the most enduring horror image that Crooked House has to offer, and makes for a genuinely frightening apparition – almost as frightening as the horrendous, if period-accurate and not remotely condoned, racism exhibited by several party guests. This episode is also the one which features the most Who alumni of the bunch, with the groom-to-be – Felix – being played by Gatiss’s husband Ian Hallard, who also played Alan-a-Dale in the rather entertaining Capaldi-era story “Robot of Sherwood”. The most notable Who cast member to guest-star in this episode, however, is the late Jean Marsh (companion Sara Kingdom in “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, among others), who plays Felix’s grandmother, the Lady Constance de Momery; Marsh delivers a superb turn here as an elderly matriarch whose past is full of secrecy and regret, and her appearance here is all the more reason that you should factor Crooked House into your 2025 Christmas viewing schedule somewhere. Earlier this year, I wrote an “Outside the Blue Box” article on Dark Places (1974) for The Geek Show Patreon in tribute to Marsh, so check that out for my further thoughts on her place in Who’s history – though I will confess that she has more screen time in Crooked House than she does in that other story of a haunted abode.
The final episode, “The Knocker” (I’ll have you know that we’re all mature adults here), takes us back to the present day, with Ben returning home and experiencing some decidedly odd phenomena thanks to the titular door ornament. Without spoiling too much for those who have not yet seen Crooked House, this is the episode where all is revealed, and important details come to light which recontextualise everything we have seen in the previous two episodes; all I will say is that Gatiss decidedly sticks the landing, and the ending to the series is appropriately chilling and twisted in a fashion reminiscent of old Amicus portmanteau horror pictures such as The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and Asylum (1972). Daniela Denby-Ashe, who played Mary in the less-than-fondly-remembered Torchwood story “Greeks Bearing Gifts”, plays an important role in this episode as Hannah, Ben’s pregnant ex-girlfriend, whose connection to the rest of the plot only becomes apparent in the closing moments of the series.
The Who connections in Crooked House don’t end in front of the camera, which shouldn’t be surprising given that this was a BBC Production from 2008. The show was produced by Paul Frift, who also acted as producer on two Capaldi-era episodes including the 2014 Christmas special “Last Christmas”, and executive produced by Richard Fell, who was head of the BBC Fiction Lab between 1999 and 2006, and was responsible for producing the wilderness-era Who webcasts Death Comes to Time (2001) and Real Time (2002) for the BBC1 website. The show’s editor, Crispin Green, won a BAFTA Cymru award for his work on the David Tennant story “Tooth and Claw”, and did editing work on iconic Who stories such as “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Silence in the Library”. Finally, the score for Crooked House was composed by David Arnold, a celebrated film composer who has provided music for everything from Casino Royale to Good Omens – and, for Who fans, was the composer responsible for the Eighth Doctor’s theme at Big Finish.
Crooked House is a very solid, creepy piece of televisual horror, and one which certainly bears revisiting (not least due to its relatively short length); it could easily be argued that this is a better tribute to the spirit of Lawrence Gordon Clark’s A Ghost Story for Christmas than some of the entries in Gatiss’s official revival, though that being said I have a real soft spot for a handful of the new ones (“Count Magnus”, anyone?), and will most certainly be tuning in this Christmas eve to watch Gatiss’s take on “The Room in the Tower”.
Merry Christmas, one and all. Now is the season for ghosts. And Doctor Who – but when is it not?
Crooked House is available on DVD in its 90-minute feature film form, though the 2009 BBC DVD edition is likely out of print, and can only be acquired second-hand. At the time of writing, Crooked House is also available to watch (in the same format) on Amazon Prime Video.
