32 - BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas - Whistle and I'll Come to You & Stigma

"Whistle and I'll Come to You" is a 1968 BBC television drama adaptation of the 1904 ghost story "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" by M. R. James. It tells of an eccentric and distracted professor who happens upon a strange whistle while exploring a Knights Templar cemetery on the East Anglian coast. When blown, the whistle unleashes a frightening supernatural force.

The production starred Michael Hordern and was adapted and directed by Jonathan Miller. It was broadcast as part of the BBC arts strand Omnibus and inspired a new yearly strand of M.R. James television adaptations known as A Ghost Story for Christmas.

Jonathan Miller adapted his 1968 version as part of the BBC arts strand Omnibus, which consisted mainly of arts documentaries so the dramatic adaptation was an unusual move; This probably explains Miller's documentary-like introduction to the film. The adaptation itself changes a number of aspects of James' story, turning the academic, described as "young, neat and precise of speech" into a bumbling, awkward, middle-aged eccentric. This adaptation was filmed on the Norfolk coast, at Waxham and nearby.

The performance of Michael Hordern is especially acclaimed, with his hushed mutterings and repetition of other characters' words, coupled with a discernible lack of social skills, turning the professor from an academic caricature into a more rounded character, described by horror aficionado David Kerekes as "especially daring for its day". The stage journal Plays and Players suggests that Hordern's performance hints that the professor suffers from a neurological condition called the "idea of a presence". Much of the script was improvised on location with the actors.

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Stigma is an episode of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas series, made in 1977. It was the first of only two stories set in the actual year of its making, and the last which mainstay Lawrence Gordon Clark would direct. It was first shown on BBC One on 29 December 1977 (postponed from its original scheduled broadcast date of 28 December), and was repeated on 29 May 1978. Scripted by Clive Exton, the thirty-minute piece stars Kate Binchy, Peter Bowles and Maxine Gordon.

The production was filmed at Avebury, Wiltshire, which had also been the location used for the ITV series Children of the Stones (screened earlier the same year). The production is unlike the previous films in the Ghost Story For Christmas strand in several ways; it is the first to be an original story and the first to be set in the then-present day. Critical opinion is decidedly mixed, with the decision to move away from adaptations of classic ghost stories the main concern. 

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