Whistle and I'll Come to You is the title of two BBC television drama adaptations based on the ghost story "Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad" by the writer M. R. James. The story tells the tale of an introverted academic who happens upon a strange whistle while exploring a Knights Templar cemetery on the East Anglian coast. When blown, the whistle unleashes a supernatural force that terrorises its discoverer.
The story was first published in 1904 in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, the first collection of ghost stories that James published based on tales he had written as Christmas entertainments for audiences of friends and selected students at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he was provost.
The first adaptation was made by the BBC in 1968. It was adapted and directed by Jonathan Miller and broadcast as part of the BBC arts strand Omnibus. This production inspired a new yearly strand of M.R. James television adaptations known as A Ghost Story for Christmas (1971–1978, 2005–2006). A new adaptation of Whistle and I'll Come to You, written by Neil Cross and directed by Andy de Emmony, was made by the BBC in 2010. Both adaptations use James' story as a basis, but alter a number of aspects of the tale.
Read more about Whistle And I'll Come To You: 1968 Adaptation, 2010 Adaptation, DVD Releases
Famous quotes containing the words whistle and and/or whistle:
“I do not know whether there be, as a rule, more vocal expression of the sentiment of love between a man and a woman, than there is between two thrushes. They whistle and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)