A Christmas Carol

Written by Steven Knight and directed by Nick Murphy, this latest adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella (which aired on the BBC in the UK and Ireland as three one-hour episodes over three nights, and on FX in North America as a three-hour film) was heavily advertised as the "darkest" version ever made, with a Scrooge for our bitter and jaded times. Very much eschewing the sweetness of previous adaptations, the show interrogates not just such standard fare as the exploitative nature of capitalism and the illogicality of certain Christmas traditions, but actually deconstructs the thematic foundations of the novella itself. Fans of the original have taken issue with some of the changes (such as the reformulation of Scrooge from misanthrope to villain, the depiction of child sexual abuse, and the joyless nature of the Cratchit family), and certainly, some of these complaints are justified. On the other hand, it looks amazing, is anchored by an extraordinary central performance, and the attempt to ground the whimsical nature of the original in something more akin to psychological realism is, for the most part, very well-handled.

Good lord though, the last 30 seconds are ill-advised.

Set in London in December, 1843, Ebenezer Scrooge (an incredible Guy Pearce) is a miserly and cynical individual, who is contemptuous of the good cheer that people exhibit at Christmas, arguing that such sentiments are hypocritical and fake, a philosophy he takes great delight in explaining to his put-upon clerk, Bob Cratchit (Joe Alwyn). Meanwhile, in Purgatory, Scrooge's dead friend, Jacob Marley (an excellent Stephen Graham) is told that because he and Scrooge worked together to exploit others, his redemption is tied up with Scrooge's. And so Marley visits Scrooge, telling him that three ghosts will be coming to see him, laying bare his life and choices - the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Andy Serkis), Christmas Present (Charlotte Riley), and Christmas Future (Jason Flemyng).

The first thing that jumped out at me in this adaptation was the aesthetic, particularly Si Bell's dark and oppressive cinematography, which avoids primary colours as much as possible, instead casting the world in blacks, greys, browns, and off-whites, with ample use of deep shadows. Interiors punctuate these shadows with the teal and orange glow of the fireplaces, and overall the show's palette is extremely muted, as it should be. In this sense, the opening scene, featuring an ominous raven and a child urinating on Marley's grave, tells us just how unique the visual template is. Another nice early scene is when Scrooge is counting the recurring noises outside his window so as to chart his frustration. The scene is shot entirely from his perspective, we're locked inside his subjectivity, so we hardly ever see the people who are making the noises, we just hear the noises, which is an excellent way to convey that he looks at the world quantitatively, seeing no humans, only numbers.

The most aesthetically impressive sequence comes in the last episode; as Scrooge stands in his office, he looks up and the ceiling has become a layer of ice. Then someone falls through the ice and seems to float in the air - we're actually underneath the ice layer, and the person who has fallen through is drowning, all the while Scrooge looks up from his office below, helpless to intervene. It's a haunting and extraordinary image. There's also a very subtle shot in the second episode with huge thematic importance - as Scrooge relives a moment from his childhood, we see his father (an intense Johnny Harris) threaten to beat him as he cowers on a bed. However, although it is the adult Scrooge we can see, the shadow he casts is that of his childhood self. Really good stuff.

Thematically, the show covers some of the same ground as the novella. In an early scene, for example, Scrooge brilliantly deconstructs the concept of gift-giving and then goes on to pick apart the very notion of Christmas cheer, in a speech that represents some of Knight's tightest writing; "How many Merry Christmases are meant and how many are lies? To pretend on one day of the year that the human beast is not the human beast? ... Instead of one day good, the rest bad, why not have everyone grinning at each other all year and have one day in the year we're all beasts?" In a subsequent scene, Scrooge relives the origins of this philosophy, as his drunken and bankrupt father tells the child, "A gift is just a debt unwritten but implied" and "everyone out there - every man, every woman - they're all beasts who care only for themselves. Because that's what a human is. It's an inward-looking thing only."

Where this adaptation breaks from the novella is in the depiction of Scrooge himself. Usually, a curmudgeonly old misanthrope, the worst you could really say of him was that he was a personification of some of the more unpleasant aspects of capitalism. Here, however, he has been refashioned as an outright villain. A manipulative asset stripper, Scrooge is complicit in the deaths of numerous factory workers and numerous miners, due to his penny-pinching ways. He's a man who goes out of his way to be nasty to people and whose treatment of Cratchit is almost fetishistically perverse. And that isn't even to mention his abuse of the power his wealth affords him, using it to compel people to demean themselves for his curiosity.

However, I would contend there is thematic justification for making this significant change. Dickens' Scrooge is not an irredeemable character, but the Scrooge of this show is, which necessitates that the joyful catharsis found in Dickens be reformulated as an altogether more sober moment of self-realisation. And the absence of such catharsis is precisely the point; this Scrooge is savvy enough to understand that redemption won't do anything to erase his past deeds, so he doesn't especially care about redemption, which is a kind of psychological verisimilitude not found in the original or any of the adaptations. Depicting Scrooge as much worse than usual allows Knight to build organically to a more downbeat, but so too more realistic ending that's far more in tune with our own cultural milieu than the twee optimism found at the conclusion of Dickens's tale.

Indeed, most (but not all) of the significant changes can be explained thematically. For example, the much-discussed childhood sexual abuse storyline is there to add an extra layer of psychological trauma to Scrooge's childhood. Similarly, there's no final joyous scene with Fred because the show doesn't deem Scrooge worthy of such a scene. On the other hand, portraying Scrooge as a pseudo-sexual predator serves little intrinsic purpose. Yes, I understand it's to paint him as thoroughly vile, but it's unnecessary, and achieves nothing that couldn't have been accomplished using less extreme tropes. Another change I didn't really like is the unrelenting miserableness of the Cratchit family. In the novel, they're poor but loving, a deeply happy family who get strength from one another. In the show, they're a bunch of sourpusses who do little but complain (except Tiny Tim, he's fairly laidback). This achieves nothing - the whole point of the family in the novella is to show Scrooge that happiness doesn't necessarily depend on material possessions and wealth.

On a much more practical level, the pacing of the show is very poor. The Ghost of Christmas Present only appears to Scrooge at the top of the second hour; he then takes that entire hour and about 20 minutes of the last hour. The Ghost of Christmas Present gets about 20 minutes and the Ghost of Christmas Future no more than 10 or so. This has the effect of making the first hour seem unending and the last hour seem rushed. Another issue I have is the design of the Ghost of Christmas Future. See the awesome Death-like figure on the poster? Don't get too attached to him because he never appears in the show, not once. The Ghost of Christmas Future is instead a guy wearing a long black coat and a black hat, with his mouth sewn shut...and that's about it.

And then there's final 30 seconds. I have no idea what they were going for with this ending, but it makes little contextual sense, it's patronising, incredibly preachy, and...just wrong, both thematically and tonally. Indeed, if you really think about it, it completely undermines much of the themes the rest of the show has established.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this adaptation, which is dark both literally and figuratively. It's an altogether more realistic version of the story, one more in tune with our cynical times, and for that, Knight should be commended. But the changes are significant, and a few don't work. In this sense, I'm honestly not surprised it got such a mixed reaction.