TWO SUITABLY HAUNTING occasions mark the arrival of SFX on the set for A Ghost Story For Christmas 2024. One, it’s the week of Halloween and two, it’s writer/director, and to all intents and purposes showrunner, Mark Gatiss’s birthday.

“It’s great, because I generally tend to do it around my birthday, and so I actually remember them vaguely, as opposed to them just drifting into nothingness,” Gatiss grins.

We’re a short train journey from London, in sprawling country grounds that contain a perfectly spooky church and a cottage that wouldn’t look out of place in Hocus Pocus.

Standing outside the cottage – it only being large enough for the smallest of crews inside – we watch on monitors as Éanna Hardwicke (Jack) and Phoebe Horn (Laura), both in Victorian attire, sit at a dining table attended by Monica Dolan as housekeeper Mrs Dorman.

Jack asks about local customs and legends, saying there’s nothing he likes more than “a proper blood-freezer on a winter’s evening”. As the fireplace roars behind them,