This was a truly frightening spine-tingle, Gatiss and the rest did a great job. Joel Garner was a West Indies fast bowler who had the trick of bowling a slow bouncer that the batsman would hit to the boundary. Then he'd bowl a quick bouncer which would nearly take their head off. This series was like that- 3rd episode was proper scary compared to first 2.
shareCricket...?
While I hope you'll get a proper answer from someone who's more equipped to discuss whether Joel Garner's trademark(?) trick is an apt analogy, I agree with what I assume is the gist of what you wrote. The first two parts were a bit of a slow build-up; the first one seemed very old-fashioned and spooky rather than scary; the second only surprised me when it came to the scissors and eyes bit - I hadn't quite expected that. I watched all three parts in a row, and it really gathered momentum up to the truly frightening end!
Like someone else on this board wrote (years ago), this was nicely done and worked especially well as a homage to the classic Ghost Stories for Christmas from the 70s. The stories weren't exactly unpredictable, but atmospheric nevertheless. I like how it's plain to tell that Mark Gatiss really loves this sort of thing, and that he must have had a lot of fun writing the dialogue for the different time periods.* I rather would have liked to watch the ones about the Waterloo veteran and the Victorian and his menagerie as well!
*One thing I noticed was the name 'de Momery' in the 20's episode. In the classic detective novel Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers (publ. 1933) appears a Dian de Momerie as the 'fast' leader of a party-loving crowd of young, rich people - I couldn't help wondering if that was a deliberate reference? - Incidentally, the novel also features a chapter about a cricket match where a player's skills have a particular significance... The details of which, alas, were also beyond my grasp.
clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...
I recently watched the Ian Carmichael Murder Must Advertise and I remember that unsavory DeMomery crowd.
I agree that the show feels like an homage to the Christmas Ghost Stories, especially the first one which felt very Jamesian. I wish there were more episodes because by the third one you can tell they've really improved. The production and direction got better with each episode.
Gatiss did bring us that Christmas Ghost Story, James' The Tractate Middoth, and it was very well done. I wish he would do more in that vein.