Mark Gatiss has written and directed a new ghost story for BBC4
The Dead Room stars Simon Callow as a radio actor haunted by his past
Sherlock co-creator and regular Doctor Who scribe Mark Gatiss is returning to the world of horror, it has been revealed at the Edinburgh TV Festival, with the actor and writer bringing a brand-new ghost story to BBC4.
Called The Dead Room, the one-off drama is written and directed by Gatiss and stars Simon Callow as a veteran radio presenter concerned by spooky goings-on at a recording studio, where he returns to present the latest edition of a long-running horror series.
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The half-hour story is set and filmed at the BBC’s iconic Maida Vale studios (soon to be shuttered as some of the Corporation’s radio operations move to East London), where Gatiss previously filmed some scenes for 2013 Doctor Who origins drama An Adventure in Space and Time.
RadioTimes.com understands that The Dead Room (a term referring to particular rooms in recording studios that are specially soundproofed) was filmed earlier in the summer, and also stars The Sarah Jane Adventures’ Anjli Mohindra, Susan Penhaglion and Joshu Oakes-Rogers alongside Callow (who previously appeared in Gatiss’s ghost-themed Doctor Who episode The Unquiet Dead).
The Dead Room follows earlier ghost stories penned by Gatiss for the BBC including The Tractate Middoth (adapted from the MR James short story of the same name) and 2008 miniseries Crooked House. He is also currently working on an adaptation of classic horror novel Dracula with his Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat.
A summary of The Dead Room was released by the BBC, and can be read below.
But times are changing. Tastes are shifting. There’s a new young producer. Whatever happened to the classic ghost stories? The good old days? Aubrey soon discovers that all is not quiet in the eerie radio studio and that elements of his own past are not as dead and buried as he perhaps hoped…
The news of Gatiss’s new drama comes among a raft of new BBC4 commissions, including new documentaries based on the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe and the roots of Eugenics (in You, Me and Eugenics) and a new Spanish thriller called The Plague, which follows the impact of The Black Death on Seville in 1597.
The historical drama, which consists of six 50-minute episodes, is broadcast around the world, and you can read more about the premise below.
Mateo (Pablo Molinero), a former heretic, must now return to the city that sentenced him to death. He must honour the dying wish of his best friend: to save Valerio (Sergio Castellanos), his friend’s bastard son.
On arrival in Seville, Mateo is arrested, but the Holy Office offers Mateo a proposal for absolution: solve the murders in the city which all seem to be part of a demonic ritual and he will be pardoned. For Mateo this is life or death and he is drawn into a conspiracy which reaches the very heights of power in Seville. As the plague begins to consume the city, the walls are closed and the pursuit to find the murderer intensifies.
All in all, then, a cheerful collection of commissions from BBC4 focused on hauntings, eugenics, murder and painful disease. Just in time for autumn.
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
