through this lack of ambiguity. The result overall remains satisfyingly unsettling, however, thanks also to Petherbridge's restrained, psychologically acute performance." The adaptations have had an influence on the work of the writer Mark Gatiss. Interviewed in 2008, Gatiss said that Lost Hearts is his favourite adaptation because it is the one that frightened him as a child and that "I absolutely love The Treasure of Abbot Thomas. The moment when Michael Bryant has found the treasure and ... is obviously losing his wits. He just says, rationally, 'It is a thing of slime, I think. Darkness and slime ...' There's also the fantastic scene where he thinks he's got away with it by putting the treasure back. The doctor is heading up the drive and he can't quite see him in the sunlight. Then it pauses to that amazing crane shot. ... Very spooky." The reception of the two later instalments, Stigma and The Ice House, was decidedly critical. Most reviewers concluded that switching to original stories instead of adaptations was "misjudged". David Kerekes writes that The Ice House is almost "totally forgotten". Wheatley has commented that they heralded a divergence from the stage-inspired horror of the 1940s and 1950s to a more modern Gothic horror based in the present day, losing in the process the "aesthetic of restraint" evident in the original adaptations. The BBC Four revival beginning in 2005 with A View from a Hill was greeted warmly by Sarah Dempster of The Guardian, who stated that the programme was, "in every respect, a vintage Ghost Story for Christmas production. There are the powdery academics hamstrung by extreme social awkwardness. There is the bumbling protagonist bemused by a particular aspect of modern life. There are stunning, panoramic shots of a specific area of the British landscape (here, a heavily autumnal Suffolk). There is the determined lack of celebrity pizzazz. There is tweed. And there is, crucially, a single moment of heart-stopping, corner-of-the-eye horror that suggests life, for one powdery academic at least, will never be the same again." Related works Before Clark's films came under the remit of the BBC Drama Department it commissioned a Christmas play from Nigel Kneale, an original ghost story called The Stone Tape, broadcast on Christmas Day 1972. With its modern setting, this is not generally included under the heading of A Ghost Story for Christmas and was originally intended as an episode