The Tractate Middoth (2013) watch online HD

During the Seventies the BBC made a habit of broadcasting A GHOST STORY FOR Christmas, mostly written by M. R. James and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. This continued a tradition established by James himself, who initiated precisely the same ritual during his lifetime as he read out a newly-created story each Christmas to his intimate circle of friends. Directed and adapted by Mark Gatiss, THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH revives that tradition; it concerns Garrett, a young librarian (Sacha Dhawan) who works at an Oxbridge college and is asked by elderly user John Eldred (John Castle) to locate a book, "The Tractate Middoth." This book appears to have been taken by a mysterious borrower who turns out to be a rotting ghost. Garrett encounters this specter and is thereby unwittingly drawn into a dark family story of resentment and revenge. Gatiss' adaptation updates the material to the Fifties, which enables him to create a thriller in the style of the MAN IN BLACK series (which Gatiss revived on radio) or the Edgar Lustgarten mysteries for Merton Park Studios. The adaptation establishes a sense of security through the presence of familiar elements - notably the Oxbridge locations, and the presence among the cast of stalwart character actors such as Roy Barraclough, David Ryall and Una Stubbs. As the action progresses, this sense of familiarity is gradually dismantled, culminating in a violent denouement. We are left in no doubt what will happen, but Gatiss stages it in an unexpected manner in the middle of a rural clearing on what looks like a fine late summer's day. The adaptation contains some notable cameos - for example Barraclough as a librarian insisting on absolute silence in his premises (even though there doesn't seem to be anyone there apart from Garrett and his friend George Earle (Nicholas Burns); and Castle's John Eldred, whose increasing anxiety is suggested by his breathless delivery.

I always enjoy a good ghost story, but having only intermittently watched these intermittent BBC Christmas schedule fillers over the last four decades can't consider myself a genre expert. And this one is also based on one of M. R. James' lesser short stories that I've not read. My reading of horror short stories peaked with H. G. Wells' The Cone and my appreciation of horror films hasn't progressed beyond Night Of The Demon.

Rather serious young male student helping out at university library is asked by a mysterious hopeful borrower for a copy of Hebrew book The Tractate Middoth – which apparently merely relates to the measurements of a temple – but is thwarted twice by uncanny events. The fabulous title might have been less impressive sounding if the book had been even more mundane, however it's what has been enclosed within the pages by a dying man and what it's worth that is the McGuffin. Suspend belief because! The uncanny events lead to the student's nervous breakdown, complemented by a breathtakingly outrageous plot contrivance and on the way to the (apparently faithful) trite but swift conclusion there's more unsettling spooky moments. This is my key experience of James: there always has to be a couple of unsettling spooky moments in his stories, and Mark Gatiss as writer/director gets this requirement over well. Acting and production were high quality; my cleverer daughter gave it a thumbs up although niggled by the updating of the setting to the 1950's. The programme was lean and slick and all I'd hoped, expected and desired, overall imho a good directorial debut by Gatiss who appears to be swarming all over the BBC at present. If only for the sake of continuing a good BBC Christmas tradition I can only hope it leads to many more James' from him!

The original collection of stories from the Seventies on the whole were great productions, each penned by the great M. R. James, sad;y they came to an end, thankfully in 2013 Mark Gatiss decided to adapt The Tractate Middoth. It is a super smart story, so much is crammed into the limited thirty five minute running time. It's slick, eerie, and best of all manages to capture the DNA of the original episodes, it could have easily been a failed bolt on to the series, but it feels very much a part of it. The acting is terrific, John Castle and Sacha Dhawan in particular give superb performances. The direction is slick and the special effects pretty good also. There is a great twist in the ending, it feels like it could have easily come from the Seventies. Really enjoyed, 8/10

THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH deserves commendation purely because it's a traditional ghost story and an adaptation of an M. R. James story to boot. Unlike the previous version of WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU, which starred John Hurt and unwisely tried to update the story to the modern day (very unsuccessfully, I might add), THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH is extremely traditional and true to the original story.

It's a labour of love for writer/director Mark Gatiss, who turns out to be a better writer than he is director. It's not that his direction is poor, it's just rather straightforward and perhaps slightly too subtle, even when adapting an author known for his subtlety. The story adaptation also has a few flaws, including some rather large coincidences, but then it does have to all tie up neatly in a rather short running time.

The period look and feel is spot on, and the plotting is quite a bit of fun. Most importantly, it feels true to the classic adaptations of the '70s, even if it is a lesser being. The horror does feel very gentle and the two 'scare' sequences aren't entirely successful, but I'm just happy that the BBC are going in the right direction for once. Let's hope Gatiss gets to do another one next year!

Although only one feature film ("Night of the Demon") has been based upon the ghost stories of M R James, a number of them have been adapted as short plays for British television, a format to which they are possibly more suited. During my childhood in the 1970s, I remember that the BBC regularly used to dramatise one every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas", and this tradition has been revived in recent years. "The Tractate Middoth" is the latest offering in this series.

The story opens in an unnamed university library. Mr Garrett, a young librarian, is asked by a man named John Eldred for an obscure Hebrew religious text. (In the original story Garrett has the Christian name William, but that is not used here). In some ways, this is as much a detective story as a ghost story. The detective element derives from a will made by an elderly and malicious eccentric, Dr Rant, who has ingeniously concealed it within the book in question. Eldred turns out to be the nephew of the testator and the inheritor of his estate. The ghost element derives from the fact that Rant, although long dead, still seems to take a protective interest in the old book.

A frequent theme of James's work was the irruption into the rational, ordered world of his gentleman-scholars of dark, irrational forces, and this contrast between the seemingly rational and the uncanny is what gives them a lot of their force. "The Tractate Middoth" was first published in 1911, but was probably written earlier, and James probably envisaged the action taking place around 1895. Mark Gatiss, however, the writer and director of this version, has updated it to the 1950s, and I think that the change works quite well. The fifties, often seen as a brief interval of peace and stability between the turmoil of the war years and the social changes of the 1960s, were, like the late Victorian and Edwardian period, an era when it seemed, at least temporarily, that God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

Gatiss sticks quite closely to the plot of James's story. The main difference is that in the original the ghost only appears once, near the beginning. We are doubtless meant to infer that Eldred's death is due to the agency of Rant's ghost, as malevolent in death as he was in life, but James never makes this explicit. Here, Gatiss takes the opportunity to have the ghost reappear at this point, probably to make the tale more frightening.

This film is not really in the class of the best James adaptations, such as Jonathan Miller's famous black-and-white version of "Whistle and I'll Come to You" (not part of the "A Ghost Story for Christmas" series), although the reason for this may be that "The Tractate Middoth" is perhaps not James's greatest story. The main problem is that it relies too heavily on an improbable coincidence; after his meeting with Eldred and his encounter with the ghost, Garrett goes to the seaside to recover- where the landlady of his boarding-house turns out to be none other than Eldred's cousin and the beneficiary of the missing will. Gatiss, however, handles his material well, telling quite a complicated tale in just over half an hour, and the ghost is suitably scary. This was enjoyable viewing for a Christmas evening. 6/10

The BBC continued its Christmas Day tradition of adapting a ghost story by the celebrated master of the genre MR James to add a little spice and ice to the seasonal festivities. Unlike last year's "Whistle And I'll Come To You", this tale wasn't brought fully up to date instead finding itself attractively moved forward to a post-war time-span where crucially for the plot, libraries and the cataloguing of books were still important and commonplace occurrences.

I purposely read the source story immediately before I watched the programme and bar the time-change, the addition of a pipe-smoking crony of central character, earnest young student / part-time librarian Garrett to no doubt help with plot exposition, a further visitation by the horror-entity on a train journey and its suggested ominous reappearance in the final scene (the story ends happily in the original), was pleased to see some adherence to the original tale.

I liked the use of dust-flecked air to suggest the horror's presence, less so the slow-motion depiction of the thing itself. The set design was excellent throughout, particularly the library scenes and if the acting by some of the supporting actors was a little too melodramatic, the leads acquitted themselves better by playing it straight and simple.

The original story itself doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny anyway, the malevolence of the twisted priest against his surviving nephew and niece never properly explained but that's hardly the fault of writer/director Mark Gatiss who otherwise does a good job here in continuing the BBC tradition of bringing to light these slight but atmospheric and intriguing tales of ghosts and ghouls from a bygone age.

From actor, writer and director Mark Gatiss is an adaptation of a short ghost story from M R James.

Gatiss better known as a performer with The League of Gentlemen and as a writer on Doctor Who and Sherlock. He is an aficionado on horror and Victorian literature.

This is short simple, spooky tale. It has very little by way of tricks or fancy visual gimmicks. There are familiar British stalwarts such as Roy Barraclough, Una Stubbs and John Castle.

Sacha Dhawan plays an earnest Librarian in the 1950s whose disposition gets rather nervous after a spectral encounter when looking for a book in Hebrew.

Some might find the adaptation flat or uninspiring but it misses the point. It is a throwback to the old days when you had a plain ghost story told in a straightforward manner and still provides a few chills.

"The Tractate Middoth" is a British 36-minute live action short film from 2013, so this one will have its 5th anniversary next year. It was written and directed by Mark Gatiss, an Emmy winner for Sherlock, and he adapted the original work by M.R. James for the small screen here. If you hear the name of the latter, then you realize probably right away that this is among the most recent installments to the long-running British Ghost Stories for Christmas series that existed in the 1970s already. This BBc production features a bunch of actors that may not be well-known to non-English audiences, but nonetheless they still seem to be enjoying prolific careers, some also appeared on the previously mentioned "Sherlock". But just as overrated as Sherlock may be (starring the incredibly overrated B. Cumberbatch), just as overrated is also this little film we have here. Yes it is fairly atmospheric and the actors aren't bad (not great either though). I'll give them that. But the story struggles with authenticity on more than just one occasions and I am of course not referring to the inclusion of ghosts as this is the center of it all. I am referring to a librarian, who gets the hell scared out of him and still we are supposed to believe he keeps investigating in this spooky matter. Also how he does end up at the two women's house is a bit dubious and very much for story's purpose than convincingly realistic. I have not read James' original work, so cannot say if the problem lies there or in the adaptation here, but as a whole it is still a weak outcome, even if not a failure I guess. I give this little tale a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

The Tractate Middoth is one of James's weaker stories and although I was looking forward to a recent adaptation of his work I was surprised that this was the story Gatiss chose.

Unfortunately, despite really wanting to like this, I found it absolutely dreadful. I really thought Gatiss would come up with something good but the whole thing reeked of a student production. The acting was horrid by everyone involved other than the lead and the way it was directed was very poor, significantly the end sequence with the ghost. The whole thing felt like a horrible cliché with no thought given to atmosphere or originality. The open-ending was just pure cheese.

I also really wish Gatiss hadn't shown us the face of the ghost as it was totally ineffectual.

I think if a 10 year old happened to watch this they might have found it enjoyable and grow up with vague fond memories of a ghostly short film at Christmas time (when it was screened) only to seek it out in adulthood and be eminently disappointed.

A good example of how James's work should be adapted is Whistle and I'll Come To You from 1968, which is a fabulous, atmospheric, well made short film. And of course there is the brilliant Night of the Demon (1957). The Tractate Middoth pales in comparison.