Season's greetings, hello and welcome back to the evolution of horror.

My name is Mike Munster and as ever I am your host.

Now usually on this podcast we take you through the evolution and the history of the horror

genre by looking at particular sub-genre's one series at a time.

However, this week we're taking a little break for some spooky festive treats.

This week we're going to be talking Christmas ghost stories in celebration of a brand

new ghost story airing on BBC 2 at 10.30pm here in the UK on Christmas Eve.

That's an adaptation of MR James's The Mezzo Tint directed by Mark Gaitis.

Now later on in this episode I'm going to be joined by friend of the pod Adam Robinson

and we're going to be talking about some of our favourite ghost stories and discussing

the Mezzo Tint in spoiler-rific detail.

But first of all, as an extra special Christmas gift for you all,

I was lucky enough to sit down and chat to one of my absolute heroes,

the director of the Mezzo Tint, Mark Gaitis.

Now I'm sure most of you listening know who Mark Gaitis is.

He has been responsible for some of the best television over the last 20 or 30 years.

He of course became famous through the League of Gentlemen.

But since then he's also been partly responsible for the brilliant Sherlock television show

starring Benedict Cumberbatch. He was also co-creator of the Dracula adaptation last year.

But perhaps more importantly he's a huge horror fan and has brought us some incredible horror

documentaries over the last decade. Back in 2010 he created and hosted the history of horror

for the BBC, which for me was an incredibly inspirational,

...