Mark Gatiss on Doctor Who, Sherlock and how Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without any ghosts

This year, for his seventh Ghost Story, he's adapting E Nesbit's Man-Size in Marble for the tale Woman of Stone, which is airing on BBC Two on Christmas Eve. But keeping the supernatural tradition alive hasn't been easy.

"The first [Ghost Story] came about because the BBC asked to do a documentary about MR James, and it was the busiest year I've ever had," Gatiss exclusively tells RadioTimes.com.

"I wrote two episodes of Doctor Who and An Adventure in Space and Time and I was doing a play. It was crazy. I said there's nothing I'd like more but I haven't got the time, and they kept asking. Eventually, I said I'll do it on one condition, which is that I can make an adaptation of one of his stories.

"We actually siphoned as much money away from the documentary as possible to the drama, and it's extraordinary. We had a whole week to do it, we had a steam train, we shot it in Manchester. It was a big success, and I obviously wanted to carry on."

However, he adds: "The problem is the half-hour play slot doesn't really exist anymore. It is a '70s slot. It's gone. So trying to get the money to do a half-hour of non-anthology television is very hard.

"I kept asking and persisting, and eventually Cassian Harrison, who was controller of BBC Four, said, 'Can you do it for X amount?' I won't say how much it was, because it wasn't very much.

"The Dead Room [was done] in three days with a cast of three in 2018, and it's kind of been reestablished since then, apart from Covid. It's been a very interesting journey, to keep that tradition alive and to keep it moving forward."

Last year, Gatiss admitted he feared that Lot No. 249, the 2023 instalment of A Ghost Story for Christmas, could be the last one.

Explaining that now, he says: "I took a chance last year - I decided to go public and say, 'This might be the last one.'

"I thought, I'm just going to tell everyone how difficult it is. It's not for want of trying or anyone's will, it's just hard. Budgets are shrinking everywhere, the broadcasting environment is very fractured and strange... but amazingly, after last year's success, they just said yes this year. So I'm hoping the future [of A Ghost Story for Christmas] is very rosy."

Man-Size in Marble, which is adapted in Woman of Stone, follows a couple who move into a cottage built on the ruins of an old house and discover a local legend about evil knights whose life-size effigies walk again on All Saints' Eve. But there's a lot that lies below the surface in the story.

"It was the first ghost story I ever read, and I thought, 'I can do something quite interesting with this, about domestic violence,'" Gatiss explains of the original story.

"I think that's what it's about - her husband is extremely controlling in the story, and I thought there are things I can tease out of it... I'm very keen to try and preserve as much of the original as possible - the reason we're doing it is because they're very good stories, but also I have great respect for the authors."

Gatiss has a long history with Man-Size in Marble. Not only was it the first ghost story he ever read, he also referenced it in Doctor Who story Empress of Mars, one of the nine episodes he's written.

"Talking about my early moments of terror, they're all Doctor Who, really - and long may it continue," he says of the show.

Gatiss's first episode, The Unquiet Dead (aptly, somewhat of a ghost story set at Christmas - although aired in April, before Doctor Who Christmas specials had been established in the modern era), is turning 20, with the writer reflecting: "It's petrifying - time, as the Doctor might say, is petrifying.

"I don't know where it goes. It's 20 years since The Unquiet Dead was shot, so that's 21 years since it was announced that Doctor Who is coming back. The idea of an entire era of the modern show being almost as long as the original run is ridiculous.

"But that's how it goes - and it's very exciting to think it's still going strong and an entirely new generation has grown up in that way, lots of spotty kids saying, 'It's not as good as my Doctor Who,' by which they mean Matt Smith, and stuff that feels like it was five minutes ago is actually ancient history."

While Gatiss once contributed Doctor Who scripts semi-regularly throughout Russell T Davies's first era of the show and for Steven Moffat's run, it's been seven years since he last wrote for the show.

Asked whether he'd be keen to return, he says: "No one’s asked me! I had a wonderful run, I did nine stories and An Adventure in Space and Time, which is a culmination of everything I love about Doctor Who.

"But the last thing I did was I was in Peter Capaldi’s last story [Twice Upon a Time], a regeneration story, with David Bradley, the actor I cast as the First Doctor, and I was playing the Brigadier’s grandfather. And I remember thinking, 'This is maybe where I should step off, because it’s not going to get any better than this.'"

Stepping back from Doctor Who has had its positives for Gatiss, though: "I genuinely just watch the show like a viewer again, and I really like that because it is different. When you work on something you love, it changes your relationship with it, inevitably. So it's very exciting just to see what happens."

This Christmas, he's looking forward to watching Joy to the World, the special written by his long-time collaborator and former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat.

"I don't know much about this special," he admits. "Steven sent me it a while ago, but I think it changed quite a bit. I'm just looking forward to watching it - later on on Christmas Day, because otherwise I will genuinely be transformed into an eight-year-old version of me sitting this close to the television shouting at my family and somewhere in the background, the ghost of my mother saying, 'Shh, his programme's on!'"

And, besides A Ghost Story for Christmas, there's a lot to come from Gatiss soon, including detective series Bookish.

"I'm writing a second series at the moment, and you realise how often you have to make the detective clever just by people saying it to him! Then you knock out all the bits in between that make him not clever, that's how Sherlock Holmes used to do it. I'm very excited about it," he says.

Naturally, when Gatiss brings up detectives, it's impossible not to ask about a potential return for our favourite one, Sherlock. Season 4 aired in 2017, and ever since, there have been rumours and hints that we could one day see more.

"Steven and I wanted to do a film, but Martin [Freeman] and Benedict [Cumberbatch] are obviously very busy, always, and we haven't managed to do it," he explains.

"We always said if we had a good idea, we'd do a film. We had a very good idea during lockdown, we had Zooms with both of them, but that's as far as we got. It is a good idea - it'd be really good to do a Sherlock film. That's where we are, I'm afraid."

But for now, Gatiss is keen to keep moving forward - something that's represented in his attitude towards A Ghost Story for Christmas hopefully continuing for years to come.

"It's not just an exercise in nostalgia. There's a reason it feels right on Christmas Eve - there's lots of candles, it looks very beautiful, and there's something about it which presses a button for us all. Equally, it's exciting to try and change things up a bit."

Mark Gatiss's Ghost Story Woman of Stone airs on BBC Two and iPlayer on BBC Two and iPlayer on Christmas Eve at 10:15pm.

Check out more of our Fantasy coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.