Williams encounters the eccentric Mrs Ambrigail ( Frances Barber), the wife of the local vicar, and discusses with her his attempts at solving the mystery about his ancestor's two surnames.īinks discovers that the house in the picture is Anningley Hall in Essex, where the infant child of a former owner disappeared mysteriously one night, soon after the child’s father had Gawdy, a local poacher, executed.

But there hadn’t been a moon - or a figure - when Williams had first looked at it.

And a figure on the edge of the engraving. When the picture arrives his golfing friend Binks ( John Hopkins) comments on the wonderful play of moonlight across the lawn in the picture. The engraving has a very high price - two guineas - for so average a piece - and Williams sends for it on approval to see if it justifies the amount being asked for. Specialising in the topography of England, he is initially disinterested when an art dealer sends him details of an early 19th-century engraving, a mezzotint, of an old country house. His life revolves around his work, golf, playing cards and trying to solve a family mystery - why his great grandfather had two surnames on his birth certificate. In 1922 the middle-aged and bumptious bachelor Edward Williams ( Rory Kinnear) is living an uncomplicated life as the curator of a small museum at an Oxford-style college. Adapted and directed by Mark Gatiss, it was broadcast on 24 December 2021 on BBC Two as part of the long-running A Ghost Story for Christmas series. James, included in his 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Running at 30 minutes, it was based on the ghost story The Mezzotint by British writer and academic M. The Mezzotint is a supernatural television drama produced by the BBC.

Ghost story for christmas the mezzotint