The BBC has chosen violence for Christmas this year — and Mark Gatiss is holding the knife. His newest ghost story follows Roger Winstanley, a man stalked for 15 years by a recurring dream: a country house, a distorted timeline, faces aging in front of him, and a door at the top of the house that conceals something no one should ever open. Tobias Menzies and Joanna Lumley lead a cast that turns dread into ceremony, filmed inside the echoing halls of Cobham Hall in Kent, where every corridor looks built for secrets. Fans of Lot No. 249 and Count Magnus are already calling this Gatiss’s most terrifying Christmas entry yet — not for jump scares, but for the way it crawls under the skin and waits. No sleigh bells. No cheer. Just a nightmare with impeccable manners — exactly the kind that lingers after the TV is dark. And if early viewers are right, it isn’t the room in the tower that will haunt you — it’s what follows you out of it
London — The BBC has confirmed that its 2025 Christmas ghost story will be The Room in the Tower, a new adaptation written and directed by Mark Gatiss and headlined by Tobias Menzies and Dame Joanna Lumley. The psychological chiller, filmed at the historic Cobham Hall in Kent, is already being described by early viewers as Gatiss’s most disturbing seasonal tale to date.
The drama follows Roger Winstanley (Menzies), a man tormented for 15 years by the same recurring dream: a recurring invitation to a country house where time fractures, familiar faces age unpredictably, and an unspeakable menace waits behind the door of an upper chamber known only as “the room in the tower.” Gatiss adapted the film from E. F. Benson’s classic short story.c1
A Cast Built for Unease
Alongside Menzies and Lumley, the cast includes Nancy Carroll, Ben Mansfield and Polly Walker. The ensemble, critics say, gives the film the poise and restraint typical of the BBC’s Christmas ghost tradition — before the script delivers shocks designed not to jolt but to burrow.
Gatiss’s earlier Yuletide adaptations — including Lot No. 249 and Count Magnus — were praised for tone and craft. But insiders who attended a closed screening say The Room in the Tower goes further, pairing period tension with what one attendee called “an aftertaste of dread that refuses to clear.”
The Tradition Continues — Darker Than Before
For decades, the BBC’s Christmas schedule has included prestige horror and supernatural fiction as counter-programming to seasonal spectacle. Gatiss has become the contemporary custodian of that tradition, leaning into unease rather than gore.
In a brief statement, Gatiss said he wanted this year’s story to feel “like a bruise that blooms after you think the blow has passed.”
Anticipation Ahead of Broadcast
No exact broadcast time has yet been announced, but the special will air on BBC One over the Christmas period and stream on iPlayer thereafter. International distribution discussions are underway.
Fans of the tradition are already primed. One prominent reviewer who saw the film under embargo wrote on social media:
“It’s the first Gatiss ghost story that made the room go silent after the credits. You don’t exhale — you scan the dark.”
If advance reactions hold, The Room in the Tower is set not merely to scare on Christmas — but to linger long after the lights go out.
