I have never understood the association of ghost stories with Christmas. Is it because it is still a part-pagan festival? Is it because we don’t like to let ourselves be too happy? Or is it because the whole family is likely to be home and you need to remind yourself that there could be more malevolent forces out there than in here, whatever the toxic dynamics? Perhaps it’s just because it gets dark so early.

Whatever the reason, here is another half-hour shiver from Mark Gatiss, adapted this time not from the output of his beloved MR James, but from a more unexpected source. A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone is based on a short story called Man-size in Marble by E Nesbit. Yes, that E Nesbit! The Railway Children E Nesbit! She was a prolific writer of novels and short stories, for adults as well as children; Man-size in Marble was published as part of her Grim Tales collection (for grownups) in 1893.

Gatiss frames his version around Nesbit, played by Celia Imrie, in bed and suffering from the lung cancer that would kill her in 1924, but still the glamorous, sociable and mesmeric figure she always was. “I rather like lying in bed smoking Old Virginia and making phantoms in the air,” she says to the young Dr Zubin (Mawaan Rizwan), making his daily visit. He has read only The Railway Children, so she tells him one of her other tales and puts him in it. “Every ghost story should have a rational medical man to offset the nonsense …”