Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a holiday staple, seen in various iterations this time of year, including Disney animated and Muppets children’s versions, the stop-motion animated variety, and more traditional outings like the films starring George C. Scott and Patrick Stewart. Then, there’s the subversive update, Scrooged, starring Bill Murray, which is always highly recommended this time of year. In other words, television — especially in the ongoing glut of content known as Peak TV — isn’t exactly in dire need of a new spin on the classic tale of redemption. And yet, FX and Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight have teamed to bring one to the masses.
FX’s content being what it is, one could suss out fairly quickly how this new version of A Christmas Carol was going to work. And one glimpse at some of the promotional materials or trailers, and it was immediately clear this was going to be an adults-only version, with plenty of coarse language and some incredibly dark takes on the likes of Scrooge (Guy Pearce) and Jacob Marley (Stephen Graham), as well as the three ghosts Ebenezer is visited by on his pre-Christmas road to spiritual renewal. The Ghost of Christmas Past is played with great intensity by Andy Serkis, while the Ghost of Christmas Present is played by Peaky Blinders alum Charlotte Riley, and the Ghost of Christmas Future is represented by a mute (garishly mute) Jason Flemyng (Pennyworth).
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While a straightforward, albeit dark and f-bomb-dropping version, of Dickens’ work would likely be worth a passing glance — especially this time of year — Knight has something different in mind for his adaptation. Here, along with director Nick Murphy (The Hot Zone), Knight aims to use his three-hour runtime to engage in a little (okay, a lot of) analysis of the notorious miser, digging into the various past traumas and psychological underpinnings of his contempt for humanity, something that extends to his employee, Bob Cratchet (Joe Alwyn) and his family, Mary (Vinette Robinson), Belinda (Tiarna Williams), and, of course, Tiny Tim (Lenny Rush).
To accomplish this, A Christmas Carol spends the vast majority of its time exploring and analyzing Scrooge’s past. While this results in a somewhat uneven distribution of time between the three ghosts — both Present and Future are remanded to the miniseries’ final hour — the emphasis on backstory nevertheless offers a compelling and fittingly somber explanation for why Scrooge is the way he is. That exploration involves Serkis’ Ghost of Christmas Past taking on a number of different guises, including Scrooge’s father, Franklin (Johnny Harris), and Alibaba (Kayvan Novak, What We Do in the Shadows), the not-so-living embodiment of Ebenezer’s favorite story as a child.
These guises work to the story’s advantage, providing context to the source of Scrooge’s pain without relying entirely on Serkis as the sole conduit to Ebenezer’s troubled past. The deep dive into a miserable childhood filled with abuse from both his father and the headmaster at the private school he was forced to attend helps explain Ebenezer’s misanthropy, something he later becomes obsessed with justifying through various experiments testing the limits of goodness and morality in those around him, particularly Mary Cratchet, who, it is revealed, has a special connection to the spirits beset upon Scrooge.
The emphasis paid to the spirit’s inducement is much like the prominence of Scrooge’s past, in that it means to simultaneously ground the story while also imbuing one specific character with a heretofore unrealized inclination toward the supernatural. Though a tad clunky at times, it’s not altogether unsuccessful in what it’s trying to accomplish, at least in terms of investigating the roots of Scrooge’s miserliness, and demonstrating the true costs of his greed and shameless devotion to capitalism as it pertains to actual human lives. Mary’s connection to the spirit world, however, is more tenuous, both as a narrative device and as a way of informing the audience who she is. There’s little information in regard to Mary’s relationship with the supernatural nor is she much of a character outside of her actions, and as such, the supernatural connection is both abrupt and a little befuddling. It is not without its merits, though, as a disturbing scene involving Scrooge testing Mary’s resolve in exchange for money to save Tim’s life becomes the moment at which it seems Ebenezer is beyond redemption (and perhaps indeed he is), and the source of Mrs. Cratchet’s dimension-bending ire.
Though the emphasis on Scrooge’s past makes the story uneven at times, and certain actors seem to be in entirely different productions, A Christmas Carol is nevertheless a worthy addition to the ever-growing list of adaptations of the Dickens novella. It’s easy to be snarky and to call this the “reboot no one wanted,” and though it won’t be for everyone and it’s definitely not family-friendly fare, FX is at least sticking to its brand, delivering a holiday treat that’s as dark as a lump of coal.
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A Christmas Carol premieres Thursday, December 19 @7:30pm on FX.
