For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that we might not perish, but have eternal life.

With the original unmade third film being substituted for Unnatural Selection, the planned finale for the PROBE series was lost but rounding out the final original outing for the cast and crew is the sequel to the second film. Ghosts of Winterborne is also the shortest film in the series only just clocking in at 40 minutes long which left me somewhat worried about how this film would come across... thankfully it's a return to form for the series and sends off the original cast with good grace.

The Devil of Winterborne has only recently been exorcised by P.R.O.B.E. But when the body of its last victim disappears, and a book of black magic spells is stolen from a local museum, Liz Shaw begins to wonder if the ghosts of the past have really been laid to rest. Forced into an unholy alliance with the school's disgraced headmaster, Liz must fight not only her own warring emotions but a festering evil that threatens to corrupt the Earth again after 100 years. But how do you fight a shadow from hell?

I'm somewhat glad they decided to make a sequel to Devil even though it really didn't need or actually warrant one, but Ghosts manages to stand above the title and description of sequelitis. Returning to the series is Peter Davison and Reece Shearsmith, who put in fantastic performances and truly steal the film even if the dialogue is a lot more clunky here than it should be, but Mark Gatiss' story and ideas come across brilliantly. The music is subtle and helps underscore the more dramatic moments of the film and the direction is rather great for these BBV films.

Overall, Ghosts of Winterborne is more overtly occultist than The Devil of Winterborne, but the final PROBE story ties up various loose ends and makes for a fairly satisfying (if rather short) conclusion.

I suppose I'll have to watch When to Die at some point...

Extinguishing said youth's life in a special or holy place. And the blood once thus imbibed will allow creation of the matrix favourable to the Dark Ones. And precipitating partial resurrection.