This year's BBC Christmas television ghost story special is Charles Dickens' The Bride's Chamber. The show will star Martin Freeman (The Hobbit) and Jim Broadbent (Bridget Jones). Described as Dickens' "darkest story," The Bride's Chamber follows a spurned and spiteful suitor who manipulates a young woman into marrying him. The marriage for his claim to fortune turns darker as his murderous plan creates his own purgatory.

Freeman and Broadbent will be joined by Adrian Scarborough, Lewis Shepherd, Joe Armstrong, and India Fowler. Writer-director-actor Mark Gatiss is once again helming for BBC's Christmas special, following The Tractate Middoth (2013), The Dead Room (2018), Martin's Close (2019), The Mezzotint (2021), Count Magnus (2022), Lot No 249 (2023), and Woman of Stone (2024).

Freeman has notably starred in Sherlock, The Office, The Hobbit trilogy, Fargo, Captain America: Civil War, and Black Panther. Broadbent's credits include Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bridget Jones's Diary, and Topsy-Turvy.