A Christmas Carol, BBC One review – Dickens classic recast as gruelling horror story

If you came to this expecting to be reminded of such ghosts of Scrooges past as Alastair Sim or Bill Murray, you will have been reaching either for the brandy or the defibrillator.

Having said that, it was frustrating that the opening episode (with the final two following on consecutive nights) is the least compelling of the three. It took some time for the tone and feel of the piece to settle in, and the familiar structure of the story, with its visiting spirits seeking to shake Scrooge out of his Godless meanness and misanthropy, doesn’t kick in fully until episode two. Nonetheless you were left in no doubt that this was a Christmas Carol like none you’d ever seen.

The opening scene was enough of a trigger warning, as we saw a young man enter a graveyard and urinate on the grave of Jacob Marley. The camera followed the excretory trail underground, where the deceased Marley was awakened by the falling droplets. This led to a phantasmagorical sequence of Marley’s coffin crashing into the workshop of an infernal blacksmith, a monstrous figure who announced to the cringeing Marley (the now-ubiquitous Stephen Graham, pictured above) that the spirits had a job for him.

Marley, now desperate to repent of his sins, eventually received his full briefing after he’d trekked – tied with chains commemorating victims of his past misdeeds – through a snowy pine forest to a clearing where a giant fire blazed. This was being tended by the Ghost of Christmas Past (Andy Serkis, cowled and robed like some druidic prophet, pictured below), who made it clear to Marley that any redemption he might earn was inextricably linked to the fate of Scrooge, since they were bound together in shared guilt.

Meanwhile in the physical world, Guy Pearce was putting his steely stamp on the Scrooge role. Looking dessicated and pasty white, hair pasted flat on his skull as if to save on barber’s bills, he was the acme of meanness and sourness. In his huge, empty mansion, devoid of furniture and dimly lit, it’s always the season of ill-will. Even his east London accent was cheap and nasty.

He derisively spat out the notion of allowing Bob Cratchit (Joe Alwyn) to leave his office an hour early on Christmas Eve to be with his family, and demolished the entire notion of Christmas cheer, refusing to believe that for one day a year, “the human beast” becomes non-beastly. Scrooge views a Christmas present as a debt instrument which implies future repayment.

En route, Knight filled us in on some of the Scroogian back story. This Scrooge, in cahoots with his business partner Marley, is no mere money-lender, but a ruthless asset-stripping capitalist. A hellish glimpse of a blazing factory, with maimed and mutilated bodies scattered around, was testament to their indifference to the welfare of their luckless employees. Later in the story there’s a horrific scene in a Welsh coal-mine, where Scrooge’s skimping on timber has caused a catastrophic death toll. As Marley asks, “what was the purpose of our gross accumulation?"

Knight has also amplified the story of Scrooge’s loveless childhood with some additional grotesqueries, and vividly illustrates his cold-blooded quest to assess the monetary value of human emotions and personal relationships. It makes punishing viewing, and Knight has been miserly with the peace and goodwill. Happy Christmas? Er...

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