A Christmas
Carol is a British fantasy miniseries based on the 1843 novella of the same
name by Charles Dickens. It aired on FX in the United States on 19 December
2019 and it began airing on BBC One in the United Kingdom on the 22 and will
conclude two days later on 24 December 2019. The three-part series is written
by Steven Knight with actor Tom Hardy and Ridley Scott among the executive
producers.
Filming
locations include Rainham Hall in East London and Lord Leycester Hospital in
Warwick. Cast members include Guy Pearce, Andy Serkis, Stephen Graham,
Charlotte Riley, Jason Flemyng, Vinette Robinson and Joe Alwyn.
Premise
Ebenezer
Scrooge, a bitter man, despises his fellow human beings, the Christmas holiday
and what it represents. On Christmas Eve night, he is visited by the ghost of
his dead partner Jacob Marley, who warns him that in order for both of them to
be redeemed Scrooge will be visited by three spirits. Over the course of that
night, Scrooge will be confronted by visions from his past, present and future
in the hope that these experiences will help him to re-connect with humanity...
especially his own.
In this version,
Scrooge runs an investment firm, not a moneylenders.
Production
It was
announced in November 2017 that the BBC had commissioned a new telling of the
Dickens tale, with Steven Knight writing the three-part series. Knight, Tom
Hardy and Ridley Scott would serve as executive producers.
In January
2019, it was reported that Hardy was also to be starring in the series;
however, the role he would be playing was not disclosed (with Hardy being cut
from the final version). In May, Guy Pearce was revealed to be playing Scrooge,
alongside the castings of Andy Serkis, Stephen Graham, Charlotte Riley, Joe
Alwyn, Vinette Robinson and Kayvan Novak. Rutger Hauer, who was originally cast
as Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, became too sick to film his scenes and was
replaced by Jason Flemyng.
A Christmas Carol review – twee-free torment-fest is a tonic for our times
TV review
Children,
go to your rooms! This is adults-only Dickens – a foul, funny and thrilling
carve-up of festive flimflam that will leave you wondering if Scrooge is more
seer than skinflint
Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan
Sun 22 Dec
2019 22.00 GMT
5 / 5
stars5 out of 5 stars.
Christmas
is for kids, really, we all know that. But this version of A Christmas Carol,
my friends, is for you. Three parts, BBC One, an hour long each, adults only.
Not because there’s any sex (although there is a bit of swearing), but because
it’s simply … so grownup.
We open on
the eve of Christmas Eve, London 1843, as all good festive adaptations should.
Our first sight is of the late Jacob Marley (Stephen Graham) being roused from
his not-as-eternal-as-he-thought sleep. A boy is weeing on the “skinflint old
bastard’s” grave, and the drops are seeping through the coffin and splashing on
Marley’s face. God rest ye, tweeness, whimsy. Your day is done.
This is a
take on Dickens’ tale that looks into the darkness of the season, the unhappy
hearts thrown into relief by jollity, and asks who deserves their share of joy.
It incorporates a trip to purgatory for Marley, via a blacksmith who shows him
the links in the chains he has forged before he binds him – each one made from
the soul of a man, woman or child who died as a result of his and his business
partner Ebenezer Scrooge’s actions. Marley wanders through purgatory and meets
a figure stoking a bonfire. “I burn memories and old affections,” he says. “I
am the Ghost of Christmas Past, here to smoke out redemption.” He tells Marley
that his and Scrooge’s fates are tied – one cannot be saved without the other –
because “it was with him that you profaned the soul of humanity”. Marley will
be returned to the world above to pave the way. “By the time this Christmas is
ash,” says the ghost, “I must search the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge and find if
there is a tender place there.”
Above
ground, things continue in the same unblinking mood. Bustling, urchin-crammed
exteriors are replaced by deserted Georgian streets, Victoriana-stuffed
interiors with high-ceilinged rooms that are clutter-free and comfortless, and
poverty-stricken ciphers with real people struggling to do their best in a
world full of problems not of their own making. Tweeness and whimsy have made
way for psychological realism. The result is A Christmas Carol for our times,
and for many times to come.
Bob
Cratchit is neither a cowed underling nor a diehard optimist; he is a man who
can only push back so far against his boss if he wishes to keep his sorely
needed job, and justly furious about it.
And what a
boss he has. Guy Pearce is Scrooge, as tall, lean, elegant and austere as the
townhouse to which he retires once another day of extracting work from others,
tallying grievances and wrestling with ghosts (for now metaphorical only) is
done.
His
anti-Christmas sentiment is not a miserabilist pose nor an annual
crystallisation of a naturally grumpy disposition but an outcropping of an
entire philosophy. He gazes out at the street full of smiling passersby and
says, almost to himself: “It makes me sad to see all the lies … how many ‘Merry
Christmasses’ are meant? Why pretend on one day of the year that the human
beast is not the human beast?” It would make more sense, he suggests, to do
things the other way round and have one day of acknowledging all our worst
impulses. They could call it Scroogeday, says Cratchit, and his desiccated
employer is drily amused. He even lets Cratchit use his ink, as Bob’s own has
frozen. “Sort of Christmas present, is it?” asks Cratchit. “If it were,” Scrooge
replies, channelling the Ghost of Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham Yet to
Come, “I would have wrapped it in paper and ribbons in order to artificially
increase your anticipation.” The entire script is as luxuriant as the visuals
are bleak.
There are
hints that Scrooge nurses guilt and sorrow. He is assaulted by visions of what
seem to be workers in cages, but his nephew – on a final, futile visit to
invite him for Christmas lunch – tells him he comes anyway because his late
mother, Ebenezer’s sister, assured him that he must forgive his uncle: “He is
just in pain. A very old pain.”
Towards the
end of the first episode, it is clear that there are deaths on Marley and
Scrooge’s conscience, from a fire in one of their factories – the resonances
with Grenfell surely deliberate – but in their other outposts, too, across the
globe, all caused by their relentless attempts to keep costs down and profits
up. “We vandalised the world for this,” says Marley, gesturing at Scrooge’s
towering house, having found his way from purgatory. The system, says this
rich, clever, funny and courageous adaptation, implicates us all. It’s not the
kind we’re used to, but it’s as fine a distillation of the wider Christmas
message – and the wider concerns that animated Dickens in his weightier tales –
as you could hope to see.
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