Having already contributed to the delivery of a festive anthology via 2000s entirely unconventional Amicus parody The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, Gatiss’s return to the formula would eschew the black comedy trappings of the Christmas Special in favour of a more atmospheric aesthetic, reminiscent of the BBC’s celebrated A Ghost Story for Christmas series, which ran from 1971 to 1978, and often featured a dread-filled adaptation of a signature M.R.
He would also pen a trilogy of novels in the run-up to 2008, chronicling the adventures of Edwardian bon vivant Lucifer Box (apparently Charles Dickens’ pet name for his foul-tempered daughter Kate), the last of which, Black Butterfly, was published the same year as the broadcast of festive anthology series Crooked House. Most famously, he would contribute to the rebooted Dr Who, in 2005. Prior to the release of his own take on the format, Crooked House(2008), Mark Gatiss, despite having spent a large chunk of the 90’s writing Dr Who (BBC, 1963-) novels, cult spin-off show, P.R.O.B.E. (BBV Productions, 1994-) and contributing to the Big Finish range of Dr Who audio adventures, was best known for being one of the four writing and performing minds responsible for delivering offbeat favourite The League of Gentlemen into the world.įollowing the show’s success, Gatiss would continue to work constantly, writing and performing in a variety of British TV shows. It also set the bar extremely high for the British horror compendium, which would hit its cinematic peak with Amicus Productions’ run of kitschy horror portmanteaus in the ’60s and ’70s,
T he enduring popularity of the British horror anthology on screen can be traced back to Ealing Studios’ masterpiece, Dead of Night (various, 1945).Īn entirely anomalous effort from the studio, Dead of Nighthelped bridge the gap between Ealing’s wartime dramatic output and its subsequent run of wry comedy classics in the late ’40s and early 1950s.
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