A Christmas Carol BBC1

[Master Jacques]

Indeed - a Lisztian Paraphrase on Themes by Dickens. - the real HIPP attitude is to read the text and not attempt to transmogrify it into a drama script in the first place.

Except in so far as the writer himself would act the whole thing out to his paying public, with great gusto, doing all the voices and a lot of gestures. So, alas, there is a precedent!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Except in so far as the writer himself would act the whole thing out to his paying public, with great gusto, doing all the voices and a lot of gestures. So, alas, there is a precedent!

But reading from the text, without scenery or costume, and minimal props, and on his own - so, closer to a Radio adaptation (or a Talking Books) than a screening, perhaps.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Quite possibly, but for those who will not 'read, mark and inwardly digest' the Dickens story, the message has to be got out in other ways?

- and use the elements of the story to incorporate other "messages", too.

What an indictment that it seems less like history and more like current reportage...
https://www.theguardian.com/society/...-tower-hamlets

- Scrooge's phatasmagoria of the burning street towards the end of Episode 1 seemed written with Grenville in mind (and the Mine disaster in Episode 2).

[Nick Armstrong]

Yes, the Alastair Sim version is a delight

...

There was an interesting re-versioning of it on Talking Pictures yesterday - the 1961 Cash on Demand, with Peter Cushing (seldom better).

The 1951 Sim version watched yesterday: the shrieks of Katherine Harrison as she is scared stiff encountering the transformed Scrooge are among my favourite things in all cinema, and Sim himself in that scene. Tiny details struck me too: the kindly little nod of encouragement from the servant who has just taken his coat, which he sheepishly needs to enter his nephew’s festive dining room...

Episode 2 of the new one I found even more gripping than the first episode. The shape-shifting of the magnificent Serkis’s ghost, the magic lantern images transformed to visions, the back-story of mental, physical and sexual abuse. I find it an enthralling production.

And yes, Cash on Demand is a great little film! Never twigged the Christmas Carol undercurrent till now though!

[teamsaint]

A very thought provoking adaptation, very well done in almost all regards.
As somebody who has never read the original, it makes me want to read it. Which is as much as one can hope for.

I find that the bad language sits badly, but that is the modern world. A less is more approach would be preferable, but so it goes.

Interested in Cash on Demand from the comments above.

[Rjw]

Cash on Demand is on again 15th January at 01.55.

Better record it!

[Andy Freude]

Cash on Demand is also on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QChHo5Chj4k

[ardcarp]

As somebody who has never read the original, it makes me want to read it.

I doubt you'll recognise it as anything vaguely related to BBC1's naive psychotwaddle.

Bah humbug.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I watched the first two episodes with my son. We’re both hooked, though I have a guilty confession to make. I like the Disney version: Mickey’s Christmas Carol,

[gradus]

I enjoyed the adaptation, well-performed, dramatically coherent and more to my taste than any other production that I've seen. Trebles all round.

[kindofblue]

A vivid account of the original, which had social comment at its heart. An updating to be more 'relevant' is wholly appropriate given that what is considered exploitative today may not have been so in the 19th century. The moral of the tale was respected with great style. Commentators elsewhere have felt it appropriate to comment on the fact that the the wife is mixed-race; humbug.

[ardcarp]

It takes a lot for me to 'suspend disbelief', especially in TV films. I don't know why. But here it was the simple point of keeping Victorian sets and costumes but using present-day script. I don't give a f*** about the bad language. It was just the mis-match. Maybe I should have tried harder...but there's so much else to be doing.

[vinteuil]

.


... I thought this was amazingly good. I need to watch the final episode again to re-experience what was going on, but the intensity of Scrooge, almost as an eighteenth century philosophe wishing to be consistent with his logically held beliefs, was compelling. And the difficult darkness of the ending, in his encounter with Mrs Cratchit, where he does not seek forgiveness after his horrendous moral 'experiment' was beautifully placed. And throughout, the visual skills were amazing - Tiny Tim crashing thro' the ice to float suspended above Scrooge in his room - tremendous. A much deeper and more interesting experience for me than Dickens's original.

.

[ardcarp]

...looks like I'll have to try again.

[Barbirollians]

...looks like I'll have to try again.

I thought it was bloody awful. If you want a Peaky Blinders Christmas story why not make one ? Incoherent - endlessly mumbled and did such butchery to the novel that they might well have started again.