The Dead Room is a short film which is part of the British supernatural anthology series A Ghost Story for Christmas.
Produced by Isibeal Ballance and written and directed by Mark Gatiss, it is the first film to be an original story since The Ice House (1978) and first aired on BBC Four on 24 December 2018.
He and his ambitious new producer Tara (Anjli Mohindra), of whom he is dismissive due to her inexperience with the genre, discuss what makes a great ghost story whilst he reminisces about his youth in the heatwave of 1976.
However, his repressed guilt over an affair he had that summer starts to haunt him as he realizes he isn't alone in the recording booth.
The television film was announced by the channel editor for BBC Four, Cassian Harrison, at the Edinburgh TV Festival on 23 August 2018 alongside other commissions including The Yorkshire Ripper, You, Me and Eugenics and the acquisition of the television series The Plague.