# Talk:A Ghost Story for Christmas

If anybody is passing, it would be good to get a consensus of what this article is. It was recently failed as a featured list candidate for "not being a list", although it wasn't really a very clear consensus (2 to 1). I'm not sure the people opposing really understood that they're all completely different yearly film adaptations, as opposed to a traditional television series. (I do wonder if it was named "List of A Ghost Story for Christmas installments" or something, it might have been considered.) Bob talk 21:37, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Rename to List of A Ghost Story for Christmas installments will do the trick. Then renominate, and link to e.g. Freedom Awards and List of Washington & Jefferson College buildings (as I believe was a boundary list/article subject) to establish precedent. Sandman888 (talk) Latest FLC 07:52, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
Just a note that my closure of the FLC was not an endorsement of either point of view. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:38, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm not complaining, really - it had been going for some weeks without a resolution. I would just be interested in seeing what people think, as it was a bit disappointing to be told it wasn't what I'd intended it to be, if that makes sense. Bob talk 14:40, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure out if A Ghost Story for Christmas is a film series with (obviously) films as entries, or a TV series with episodes. The terminology and templates used on this and the related articles is not consistent. Would appreciate any input from people familiar with this topic. Gonnym (talk) 12:18, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

It's a series of stand-alone films, most but not all of which are based on the tales of M R James.Paulturtle (talk) 08:22, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
So I did a lot of work a couple of months ago, aided by Gonnym, to tidy up this article and those for the constituent short films, which included standardizing how the short films' articles were titled, the infoboxes, and addressing other issues raised on this Talk Page, including this one. I felt a threaded the needle well enough regarding the series vs. strand question, but one user has taken issue with any reference to it being a television series or the films as episodes and thus gone and reverted every single article to as they were before all of this, removing the many improvements made along the way, which I think makes it a good time to finally try to get a consensus on the matter. Sorry this is a bit long, but it turns out there's a lot to consider regarding the unique format of this series and how to describe it. Personally, I see both the case for it being "an anthology television series" or "an anthology series of short television films", but I'll start out by giving the rationale for how I worded it (Series article & Episode article):
Black Mirror is an anthology television series. It has used the same overall name and title screen since the start, with a couple of recent exceptions has the same genre, and has had the same primary writer/showrunner since the beginning. It also has several episodes which are feature-length and is made in an era when television drama has an increasing cinematic quality, aided by film and television now using the same kinds of cameras, and professional critics have noted that these episodes feel like feature films; they look like films, and they have the length, structure, and pacing of feature films. Despite this, these are still referred to as episodes of an anthology television series, because everything about the production and the way it's released and consumed denotes Black Mirror as a television series, and thus the individual instalments as episodes. Similarly, I'd say the use of the name A Ghost Story for Christmas in Radio Times since its inception, plus the way various critics talk about it, support referring to "short films which serve as episodes" as my intros put it.
On the other hand I'll grant that the annual release schedule of A Ghost Story for Christmas does perhaps make the term "strand" more suitable than "series", and that the cinematic quality of the 70s instalments does set them apart from any other series at the time, and that these combined really do make it a unique case in how to describe it. As far as short film ≠ episode goes, the only other case I could think of is the various television play anthology series: "The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1" is perhaps a good model for how to describe AGSFC; a television play is accepted to be different enough in form from regular scripted television that describing them first and foremost as "episodes" is incorrect. However, articles for the individual plays still have infoboxes which identify eg Cathy Come Home as an episode of The Wednesday Play, because in the context of Wikipedia that's still the appropriate way of describing an individual instalment of an ongoing series, especially one broadcast weekly as TWP was.
One caveat there is that I had been using "episode" and "instalment" interchangably in my edits, and had been considering whether for this particular series "instalment" should be the standard term to be used across the relevant articles. I think that's worthy of discussion alongside the broader issue. In the meantime, unless anyone seriously objects I will restore the newer versions of these articles, as the old ones had serious issues regardless of the series/strand question, but will attempt to find a balance in how the series/instalments are described that will be "good enough" until a consensus is reached. FreeBard42 (talk) 00:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

There was a 1976 adaptation of "Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance" (or whatever it's called). I remember seeing it at the time, and on YouTube more recently, but couldn't remember what it was called. Should it not be included in the list?Paulturtle (talk) 23:39, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm short of time here or I would embrace this myself.
Can someone take the entries in the Home media chapter and perhaps arrange them in proper chronological date order for   a more coherent read? Thanks for contributing to this valuable article! trezjr (talk) 21:07, 4 December 2022 (UTC)