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THE SIGNALMAN
Lawrence Gordon Clarke, BBC TV, 1976
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The Signalman, was the 1976 entry in the successful Ghost Story for Christmas BBC TV series. Charles Dickens' spine-tingling tale of rationalism versus superstition is set on a lonely stretch of railway at the mouth of a foreboding tunnel, where a haunted man is visited by a spirited traveller and confesses to him that his post is cursed by tragedies and spectres.
The Signalman is the first evidence of Andrew Davies' gift as an adaptor of literary fiction, as he transforms a Victorian page turner into the finest 40 minutes of supernatural drama television has ever produced. His script constantly refers back to the original story, tightening the screw by adding dream sequences, pindrop conversations and tantalising hints of the terribly inevitable climax.
Director Lawrence Gordon Clarke cast Denholm Elliott in the lead. "Denholm was so wonderful in that role, like a tightly coiled spring. There was such tension in the character: he was always only a step away from insanity."
The railway itself becomes a character in the story, Dickens somehow managing to spot that beyond the shock of the new, there was already something eerily antiquarian about this strange new mode of transport that was roaming through lonely corners of the countryside. And despite an extremely arduous shoot, Davies and Clarke's fog-wreathed, flame crackling masterpiece manages something the production team could never have imagined: it's better than the book.
Simon Farquhar
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The Signalman first appeared in the 1866 Christmas edition of the journal All The Year Round. 
