Mark Gatiss' The Man in Black- Spooky tales on BBC Radio 7

You have seen him in Doctor Who as Professor Richard Lazarus. He also wrote the episodes of The Unquiet Dead, The Idiot's Lantern and Victory of the Daleks. He also wrote an episode of Sherlock and appears in the show as Mycroft Holmes.

But did you ever hear Mark Gatiss on the radio playing a mysterious stranger with tales of horror?

I tell you it is a treat. Now time and again I have expressed my fondness of the radio drama on these pixel pages. Often, instead of visual stimulus, they provide a great story you can just listen to. But more often than not, radio dramas are creatures of their own dimension: take them out of the medium and you have lost essence of the story.

Such is the series The Man in Black. It is classified as horror but it probably would not qualify to be int hat genre seeing that it actually would terrify you. Sometimes you would pause the movie if you are scared enough. I pause the pod cast because I am terrified.

And if you want your blood chilled then all you have to do is to listen to Mark Gatiss speak. He is the character described in the title. Soft spoken and quite innocuous at first, he would strike up a conversation at a public place with some one. These conversations are what you and I would participate in ourselves for they are nothing more than ordinary politeness. But the brilliance in the story is how the horror can raise its head from the most mundane everyday matters.

A retired accountant who after a lifetime of technophobia decides to dabble at the Internet. What happens when the web devours him, literally? A couple about to get married get a glimpse thirty years into their future. Gangs of teenagers roam the streets of suburbia, feeding on the entrails of passerby s while adults cower behind closed doors. A housing estate with a high tower whose inhabitants have long been there, longer than you could imagine.

I could go on but I would rather you find out for yourself. Spooky tales that would scare the living daylights out of you. The bonus is of course, the presenter: the man in black. Mark Gatiss does a remarkable job of being the spooky story teller.

Check it out on BBC Radio 7 pod cast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio