The cast all do well here, especially the ever-reliable Rory Kinnear and John Hopkins. However, the adapter/director fails to deal with the material in a sympathetic way, occasionally getting it right but mostly getting it wrong.
M. R James' ghost stories are an exercise in the careful building of mood. All of the 70s televison adaptations (and all of the 21st century productions until 2013) were clearly produced with an awareness of this, going easy on pace, use of sound and a general avoidance of heavy-handedness. The eerie and uncanny, when it finally arrives, is powerful and affecting because it has been preceded by a very measured, sparse development. This adaptation of The Mezzotint almost totally dispenses with such delicacy of approach. It goes instead for a brisk, superficial choppy style - too many short scenes, most of which are packed with exposition, when what's wanted is a steady laying-on of dread. The shortness of the scenes means there's no time for a slow-build of atmosphere so all the heavy lifting has to be taken up by Kinnear, compensating for the impatient script and direction through performance alone. It's a measure of his skill that he pulls this off.
The tone is all over the place. Both Frances Barber and Robert Bathurst are excellent performers, but here are directed as if they're in The League of Gentlemen, forced into "doing a turn" when someone should be telling them to dial things right down. It's really not their fault but what little mood there is evaporates when they're on screen because of this basic error in tenor.
It really is time to let somebody else have a go at A Ghost Story for Christmas.
