Mark Gatiss adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol at cinemas in Leeds, Bradford, York, Harrogate and more Yorkshire locations

That’s why he adapted and starred in the Nottingham Playhouse production of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story, which was filmed live for cinemas during the 2021 stage run at London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre - and it will now be put on the big screen between Novemver 27 and December 11.

Cinemas in around the country are showing the play, including screenings in North, South, East and West Yorkshire.

With his version, naturally, some of the original text’s darkness is portrayed for audiences in a way not usually seen.

Gatiss, who is from Sedgefield in County Durham, played Jacob Marley - Alec Guinness in the 1970 film has a “profound effect” on him - alongside Nicholas Farrell as Scrooge.

“I love Marley because he’s doomed and I love how it’s too late for him but he comes back to help Scrooge,” says Gatiss, 56. “After his initial appearance he doesn’t return, so I realised I’d have to play lots of other people in the show and that was all part of the fun. I play the schoolteacher, lots of party guests and Old Joe, who is the pawn shop owner at the end. It was great and I lost about half a stone from running around.”

It has long been an ambition, he says, to adapt the Dickens story.

He says: “It’s my favourite story and I’ve always wanted to do it in some form or another. I did once do a TV adaptation that wasn’t made and I’d always thought about doing it on stage. So I was thrilled and amazed when it finally happened. It seems to have taken longer than A Christmas Carol has been around,” he laughs.

“One of the things that makes it different is that it’s very faithful to the original story. I’m a firm believer that if a source is very good then you meddle with it pointlessly at your peril. With Sherlock, even though it was modern day - which might have seemed a heretical thing to do - the essence of it was very true to the original in a way that hadn’t been done for a very long time.”

The story has spawned many adaptations since it was published in 1843 but the first version Gatiss remembers seeing was the aforementioned 1970 rendition, with Albert Finney as Scrooge, and he later saw the 1951 production starring Alastair Sim, which he “adored”.

“But I didn’t read it until I was 12 or 13 and when I did I was really knocked out by how powerful it was and also how angry it was about the Poor Law legislation.

“There have been lots of great versions of it and also lots of chintzy versions, and I wanted to get back to that dark core - especially the stuff about the two wretched children Ignorance and Want and the bit which I don’t think I’ve seen in any other version where Bob Cratchit is sitting by his dead son’s bedside. I wanted to restore some of that and also have great fun finally doing it.

“It’s about the power and possibility of redemption. The amazing thing about A Christmas Carol is that even though it was written in 1843 it feels like it’s been with us forever. It’s a myth and such a brilliant idea, such a brilliant story, that it feels like it must have always been with us.

“Also it had a genuinely positive effect. There are accounts of mill owners and factory owners who gave their employees their first day off and sent them all a goose and stuff like that because they suddenly thought ‘Oh my God, am I a Scrooge?’ The story is about the wonderful idea that it’s never too late and fundamentally I think something we can all relate to is the idea of looking back into our past and considering how taking a different path might have changed our lives.

“And I think it remains incredibly - and sadly - relevant because of its themes. There are a lot of Scrooges out there, especially at the moment, and it seems to be an ever-present problem. Revelling in cruelty is somewhere we seem to be at the moment, which is a very nasty place to be.”

The play was directed by Adam Penford, then directed for the screen by Matt Hargraves and co-produced by Eleanor Lloyd Productions, Fiery Angel, Trafalgar Releasing, Eilene Davidson Productions and Gavin Kalin Productions. It is being screened in cinemas by Trafalgar Releasing, which specialises in “event cinema” distribution.

Cinema screenings of plays, operas, gigs and the like have become more common.

For Gatiss, it can mean you have “the best seat in the house and you might notice things you maybe missed before,” he says.

“I was filming Wolf Hall a few years ago and I was deep in the Somerset countryside. We were in this amazing little village which I can’t recall the name of but it had a beautiful little art deco cinema and they were showing Simon Russell Beale’s King Lear. I was touched by it and thought ‘this is brilliant’ that deep in the countryside you could go and see Simon’s Lear that night if you wanted to.

“Then I remember when I did Coriolanus at The Donmar for NT Live and I got a message from David Tennant in Vancouver saying ‘I’m about to watch you’. Someone from India messaged me about that as well. It’s such a brilliant thing because it means there’s a proper reach to it and obviously because they then become archived you can access them again. My The Madness of George III was shown during lockdown and I think more people saw it as a result of that than had ever been able to see it before. It’s really thrilling.”

For more information about where you can see A Christmas Carol in Yorkshire, visit: christmascarolcinema.com