Cork actor Éanna Hardwicke is among the stars of BBC Two's A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone on Christmas Eve, promising viewers "a proper ghost story".
The adaptation sees writer-director Mark Gatiss (Sherlock, The League of Gentlemen) bringing Edith Nesbit's short story Man-Size in Marble to the screen with Phoebe Horn (Call the Midwife), Mawaan Rizwan (Juice), Celia Imrie (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), and Monica Dolan (Mr Bates vs The Post Office) cast alongside The Sixth Commandment star Hardwicke.
"In her final days, author Edith Nesbit (Imrie) recounts the chilling tale of newlywed Victorians Jack (Hardwicke) and Laura (Horn)," says the BBC.
"The couple are settling into a small cottage in a quiet village when their idyll is overshadowed by the superstitious warnings of their housekeeper, Mrs Dorman (Dolan), and the legend of the village church's tomb effigies - a pair of marble knights who are said to rise from their slabs on Christmas Eve…"
"I have to hold my hands up here: I knew almost nothing about Edith Nesbit," Hardwicke told the BBC.
"When I was reading about her before shooting, I discovered how prolific she was. She worked across just about every form you could imagine: novels, essays, short stories, children's stories, ghost stories."
"It's a proper ghost story - mysterious, chilling, truly frightening," Hardwicke said of his latest project.
"I love ghost stories that land in that in-between space; we don't know whether we believe or not, we don't know if they're of our own creation or inexplicably real. And then underneath the supernatural there are very real human monsters, so hopefully there are layers for an audience to unpack and be surprised by."
When asked "what makes ghost stories so fitting around Christmas time and do you have a favourite ghost story?", Hardwicke replied: "Something about the thin veil. The end of the year, winter, the colour of the whole season seems ripe for ghosts, as if at this time of the year we are more than usually close to the dead.
"My favourite Christmas ghost story - and I might be stretching the definition here - is Joyce's The Dead. It captures that feeling perfectly. It's tragic and wistful and mysterious and somehow soothing too. The John Huston film version of it is brilliant and an underappreciated Christmas film.
"And then A Christmas Carol of course. I read it most years and it amazes me every year how utterly brilliant it is."
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone airs on BBC Two on Christmas Eve at 10:15pm.
Next year, Hardwicke will be seen on the big screen as Roy Keane opposite Steve Coogan as Mick McCarthy in Saipan.
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