After five M. R. James adaptations, the final episode of the original series of A Ghost Story for Christmas adapted from a short story is The Signalman, based on Charles Dickens' celebrated tale. With Lawrence Gordon Clark still directing and the prolific and acclaimed script-writer Andrew Davies providing the screenplay the episode is often considered the highlight of the series.
The story sees an otherwise unnamed Traveller arriving at a lonely railway signal box, where he meets the nervous, frightened Signalman of the title, who recounts a dark tale of a mysterious spectre who haunts the nearby railway tunnel and whose appearance is a harbinger of disaster. In stark contrast to the vengeful supernatural horrors of the M. R. James stories, this spectre is a ghost of the future, which comes to pass in tragic fashion at the end.
Whilst Dickens' story is very different to the work of M. R. James, the resulting episode retains the same power to chill. The story - inspired by a real life train crash that Dickens survived - unfolds with an air of gathering dread, much of which is a result of Davies' script: replacing the nameless narrator of the original text with the Traveller allows him to write scenes in which the Signalman reveals the past horrors that the spectre heralded and how they continue to haunt him more than any ghost. The story is more-or-less a two hander between Bernard Lloyd's sombre, sympathetic Traveller and Denholm Elliot's tortured Signalman, and whilst Lloyd gives a good performance Elliot is remarkably impressive as the melancholy, lonely and doomed title character.
Clark's direction again imbues the film with atmosphere and makes great use of the location filming, even as the bleak landscapes of the previous episodes give way to the claustrophobic, grey railway cutting with its gaping tunnel entrance. The mock signal box is very convincing and good use is made of the Severn Valley Railway's steam engine. Once again, Clark uses various camera techniques for effect, including high and low-angle shots to introduce the too many characters. Stephen Deutsch's score is used sparingly, the soundtrack instead consisting largely of the sounds of bells and ticking clocks and a train's whistle and the terrible screech of its breaks, and again Clark creates a convincingly surreal nightmare sequence on a low budget. The death of the bride is made all the more unsettling by filming her fall in slow motion; the white-faced spectre is made chilling by the brief glimpses we see of its face. The tragic but inevitable ending still has emotional impact.
As a self-contained ghost story for television, The Signalman is almost unmatched, even if it gets stiff competition within A Ghost Story for Christmas from A Warning to the Curious. It has aged extremely well, and it is as good as the program's original run would ever get: for the final two episodes of the series, the seasonal horrors are provided not by adaptations of prose ghost stories, but by original screenplays with somewhat mixed results...
The story sees an otherwise unnamed Traveller arriving at a lonely railway signal box, where he meets the nervous, frightened Signalman of the title, who recounts a dark tale of a mysterious spectre who haunts the nearby railway tunnel and whose appearance is a harbinger of disaster. In stark contrast to the vengeful supernatural horrors of the M. R. James stories, this spectre is a ghost of the future, which comes to pass in tragic fashion at the end.
Whilst Dickens' story is very different to the work of M. R. James, the resulting episode retains the same power to chill. The story - inspired by a real life train crash that Dickens survived - unfolds with an air of gathering dread, much of which is a result of Davies' script: replacing the nameless narrator of the original text with the Traveller allows him to write scenes in which the Signalman reveals the past horrors that the spectre heralded and how they continue to haunt him more than any ghost. The story is more-or-less a two hander between Bernard Lloyd's sombre, sympathetic Traveller and Denholm Elliot's tortured Signalman, and whilst Lloyd gives a good performance Elliot is remarkably impressive as the melancholy, lonely and doomed title character.
Clark's direction again imbues the film with atmosphere and makes great use of the location filming, even as the bleak landscapes of the previous episodes give way to the claustrophobic, grey railway cutting with its gaping tunnel entrance. The mock signal box is very convincing and good use is made of the Severn Valley Railway's steam engine. Once again, Clark uses various camera techniques for effect, including high and low-angle shots to introduce the too many characters. Stephen Deutsch's score is used sparingly, the soundtrack instead consisting largely of the sounds of bells and ticking clocks and a train's whistle and the terrible screech of its breaks, and again Clark creates a convincingly surreal nightmare sequence on a low budget. The death of the bride is made all the more unsettling by filming her fall in slow motion; the white-faced spectre is made chilling by the brief glimpses we see of its face. The tragic but inevitable ending still has emotional impact.
As a self-contained ghost story for television, The Signalman is almost unmatched, even if it gets stiff competition within A Ghost Story for Christmas from A Warning to the Curious. It has aged extremely well, and it is as good as the program's original run would ever get: for the final two episodes of the series, the seasonal horrors are provided not by adaptations of prose ghost stories, but by original screenplays with somewhat mixed results...