Rather as one had feared, this adaptation suffered from the necessity of compressing an excellent but FORTY-PAGE short story into half-an-hour's airtime. This was a pity, as the depiction of the mummy itself as a shadowy (indeed barely-seen) object of deadly menace was realised very well. Credit to actor James Swanton for his convincing portrayal.
Had the events of Lot No. 249 (set in the fictitious Old College at the University of Oxford in the May of 1884) been allowed to slowly but surely unfold as they do in the original short story, a much more satisfactory result might have been achieved. As it was, the excision of characters such as Jephro Hastie (Abercrombie Smith's old schoolfriend), Harrington of King's College (William Monkhouse Lee's colleague) and, most egregiously, Dr. Plumptre Peterson (quite unnecessarily transformed into a young Sherlock Holmes) detracted significantly from the production. These excisions, plus the omission of such elements of the plot as Edward Bellingham's engagement to Lee's sister, the real cause of Bellingham's grudge against Long Norton and Smith's erroneous inference after hearing Bellingham apparently talking to himself, all contributed to a disappointing (if not entirely unexpected) outcome.
Half-an-hour is simply not long enough to do justice to this story and its development of the three principal characters and especially of the way in which the stolid, rational and unimaginative Abercrombie Smith, during that fateful month, gradually becomes aware of the terrible secret that Bellingham, through his obsessive research into Egyptology, has succeeded in uncovering. An acceptably-brief narrative voiceover, at the beginning and end of the production, could have introduced the setting and main characters and, more importantly, concluded the tale as Doyle wrote it. (After being forced by Smith to destroy the mummy, Bellingham immediately leaves the college and is last heard of in the Sudan, while Smith and Lee , who incidentally is NOT of mixed-race, remain unharmed). Such an ending, of course, would not have made as good television as Bellingham revealing both a second mummy and second roll of papyrus to enable him to wreak vengeance on his two foes. Mark Gatiss has again, as in his adaptation of 'The Mezzotint' two years ago, changed a story's ending in order that a protagonist or, in this case, TWO protagonists, come to a sticky end.
In conclusion, I appeal to the BBC to allow sufficient airtime for a dramatist more faithfully to adapt such a fine tale of the supernatural. I would also recommend reading the original story (first published in 1892 and regarded as the prototype 'mummy revenge' tale). I first read it at the age of fourteen and it remains one of the 'top ten' - or certainly 'top twenty'! - stories of the supernatural I have ever come across. Among other qualities, Doyle's tale paints a superbly-idyllic background picture of late nineteenth-century undergraduate life at Oxford in the springtime and this, contrasted with the slowly- unfolding horror and then terror occasioned by the animation and actions of Lot No. 249, only adds to the story's overall effect.
Had the events of Lot No. 249 (set in the fictitious Old College at the University of Oxford in the May of 1884) been allowed to slowly but surely unfold as they do in the original short story, a much more satisfactory result might have been achieved. As it was, the excision of characters such as Jephro Hastie (Abercrombie Smith's old schoolfriend), Harrington of King's College (William Monkhouse Lee's colleague) and, most egregiously, Dr. Plumptre Peterson (quite unnecessarily transformed into a young Sherlock Holmes) detracted significantly from the production. These excisions, plus the omission of such elements of the plot as Edward Bellingham's engagement to Lee's sister, the real cause of Bellingham's grudge against Long Norton and Smith's erroneous inference after hearing Bellingham apparently talking to himself, all contributed to a disappointing (if not entirely unexpected) outcome.
Half-an-hour is simply not long enough to do justice to this story and its development of the three principal characters and especially of the way in which the stolid, rational and unimaginative Abercrombie Smith, during that fateful month, gradually becomes aware of the terrible secret that Bellingham, through his obsessive research into Egyptology, has succeeded in uncovering. An acceptably-brief narrative voiceover, at the beginning and end of the production, could have introduced the setting and main characters and, more importantly, concluded the tale as Doyle wrote it. (After being forced by Smith to destroy the mummy, Bellingham immediately leaves the college and is last heard of in the Sudan, while Smith and Lee , who incidentally is NOT of mixed-race, remain unharmed). Such an ending, of course, would not have made as good television as Bellingham revealing both a second mummy and second roll of papyrus to enable him to wreak vengeance on his two foes. Mark Gatiss has again, as in his adaptation of 'The Mezzotint' two years ago, changed a story's ending in order that a protagonist or, in this case, TWO protagonists, come to a sticky end.
In conclusion, I appeal to the BBC to allow sufficient airtime for a dramatist more faithfully to adapt such a fine tale of the supernatural. I would also recommend reading the original story (first published in 1892 and regarded as the prototype 'mummy revenge' tale). I first read it at the age of fourteen and it remains one of the 'top ten' - or certainly 'top twenty'! - stories of the supernatural I have ever come across. Among other qualities, Doyle's tale paints a superbly-idyllic background picture of late nineteenth-century undergraduate life at Oxford in the springtime and this, contrasted with the slowly- unfolding horror and then terror occasioned by the animation and actions of Lot No. 249, only adds to the story's overall effect.