Mark Gatiss: ‘Christmas is the perfect time for ghosts’

Glad tidings of comfort and joy? Not if Mark Gatiss has anything to do with it. David Barnett meets the man who haunts Christmas

Mark Gatiss is one of our most recognisable TV actors and writers (BBC/Adam Lawrence)

It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re as ready as you’ll ever be. Presents under the tree? Check. Turkey in the fridge? Check. Mince pie for Father Christmas and a carrot for Rudolf on the hearth? Check. The thinning of the veil between this world and the next, allowing unquiet spirits to walk the Earth and the long shadows in the moonlit, frosty lanes to shift and darken with things not of this world? Check, check and check.

Because while Christmas might traditionally be the season of goodwill, comfort and joy, it is also very much the time of ghosts. And no one appreciates that quite as much as Mark Gatiss.

Gatiss is one of our most recognisable TV actors and writers, making his name with the surreal comedy of The League of Gentlemen and cementing his reputation with a starring role in Sherlock, his TV take on Dracula, and his recent run of Christmas ghost stories for the BBC adapted from the fiction of MR James.