Casting the Runes (television drama)
Casting the Runes is a supernatural television drama produced by ITV in 1979. Running at 50 minutes, it was based on the ghost story Casting the Runes by British writer and academic M. R. James, first published in 1911 as the fourth story in More Ghost Stories, which was James' second collection of ghost stories. Directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark for the series Playhouse, produced by Yorkshire Television, it was first broadcast on ITV on 24 April 1979. Adapted by Clive Exton, it reimagined the events of James's story taking place in a contemporary television studio. Synopsis The drama begins in 1968 with John Harrington (Christopher Good) walking his dog in the snow-covered landscape when the dog becomes agitated by the presence of something unseen that is silently hunting down Harrington, who has recently written a damming report on an American demonologist and cult figure named Karswell (Iain Cuthbertson), an Aleister Crowley-like figure and the self-styled 'Abbot of Lufford'. Harrington is savagely killed by a monstrous creature we only glimpse. Prudence Dunning (Jan Francis) is the producer of an investigative television programme which is critical of Karswell, who in 1969 had written a book called A History of Witchcraft. Karswell's