M. R. James himself and reading excerpts from his stories. On 31 October 2014, the BBC daytime soap opera Doctors presented an adaptation of Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad with Dr Al Haskey (played by Ian Midlane) substituted for Professor Parkins. "Whistle..." was written by Jeremy Hylton Davies and directed by Pip Short. The BBC website also produced a behind-the-scenes video of the production. On Christmas Eve 2019, the BBC broadcast an adaptation of "Martin's Close", written and directed by Mark Gatiss, and starring Peter Capaldi. It became BBC Four's "most watched programme of 2019", with 1.5 million viewers. In February 2021, the BBC announced another Christmas Gatiss adaptation: "The Mezzotint", now promoted to appear on BBC Two. On 23 December 2022, continuing with the Gatiss Christmas ghost story adaptations, the BBC showed "Count Magnus" on BBC Two. Radio 1932 – The first broadcast of an M. R. James story was made on 27 October 1932 (four years before his death) during a Bach piano concert transmitted by the BBC Midlands Regional Programme. During the 20-minute interval, "A School Story" was read "from the studio" by Vincent Curran. 1938 – On 12 March, the BBC's London Regional Programme broadcast an adaptation of "Martin's Close" under the title Madam, Will You Walk? The 40-minute play was written by C. Whitaker-Wilson and produced by John Cheatle. The Radio Times printed the musical notation for the ghostly refrain and noted, "You will have had quite enough of that tune before the play has ended. You will hear it played by a string quartet... you will hear it sung by Judge Jeffries in court (an actual fact); and, worse still, you will hear it floating on a gale of wind, sung by a murdered girl near a lonely inn in a Devonshire village. That also is a fact." 1940 – The BBC broadcast a second version of "Martin's Close" on 4 April, this time as a 25-minute reading by John Gloag for the new Home Service. 1946 – World War II had done nothing to dampen the BBC's enthusiasm for "Martin's Close", and on 13 February, C. Whitaker-Wilson's 1938 script of Madam, Will You Walk? was remounted, this time produced by Noel Iliff. Whitaker-Wilson himself played the part of Judge Jeffreys in a 45-minute production for the BBC Home Service. The same year, the anthology series Stories Old and New