Mark Gatiss’ Count Magnus Wants to Scare You For Christmas

I’ve made very strenuous efforts with [casting] Anjli Mohindra in The Dead Room, Sacha Dhawan in The Tractate Middoth, and Nikesh Patel in The Mezzotint to make sure it isn’t just a parade of middle-aged white men. However, the M.R. James archetype is exactly that. 

But to me it’s much more about, if you’re able to, to try and find a diversity of stories to tell. I wrote [a story], not an M.R. James story, an original, which was going to have a woman in the lead [role], However, the pandemic kiboshed that one. I have to say I’m very proud of having proper diversity within a format which could look like it’s only going to be very white and middle-aged.

The half-hour one-off doesn’t really exist anymore and it’s a very difficult slot to get every year. The choice of story isn’t entirely down to me, a lot of people have to agree. What they end up really agreeing on is another M.R. James because he’s the most famous, et cetera. 

Have you begun planning the next Christmas ghost story?

That’s the problem. I wish I could guarantee there’d be one, but it’s a struggle. I’m very thrilled. I collect all the press that says “a new Mark Gatiss ghost story is now as traditional as mince pies at Christmas”. I always keep them so I could show them to people and say, “Look, people demand it.” But [these M.R. James adaptations are] a tough one to finance because it’s a half hour, a, one-off. Packaging them on US BritBox is very helpful actually because then you’ve got a sort of season, a sequence of them. I finished [Count Magnus in mid-December] and it’s on next week. So we shot it much later in the year. We can pull a production together quite quickly. I certainly have plans for next year, if we are blessed enough to get another one.

Count Magnus will be available for viewing on US Britbox, BBC Two, and BBC iPlayer on December 23rd. The previous productions in the series: The Tractate Middoth, Dead Room, Martin’s Close, and The Mezzotint, are also available on US Britbox and BBC iPlayer in the UK.