A Christmas Carol

[AlecOrAlonzo]

They're mumbling.

Ffs.

They can hear it three houses away. The telly is up at 11. Still can't hear a damn thing.

Is this what pay my tv licence fee for?!

😉

Dickensian was excellent, pity the BBC didn’t make more of that, The Last Post and The Crimson Field instead of wasting money on the new set for Eastenders...

I have to say, I'm not really bothered by what Dickens would have thought of it. I can't bear the Madonna/whore complex you see running through many of his novels and IRL he tried to have his first wife committed so he could run off with his mistress. He might have mirrored some genuine social hardships that he saw around him, but let's not get carried away with seeing him as some kind of moral crusader.

That was DARK. I'm really not convinced by this adaptation at all.

How are they going to redeem him from this
That’s we are wondering. Maybe it’ll turn out he didn’t actually go through with it because if he did I’m not going to be able to find any redemption believable. I am enjoying it though (feeling conflicted over thinking phwoar about Guy Pearce as Scrooge )

Men should wear frock coats. Bloody great look.

Is that Andy Serkis as the ghost of Christmas past? He is looking quite gollumy.

DH and I debated whether we needed a new TV, given how poor the picture and sound were.
Or, alternatively, if we needed eye and hearing tests.
Don't believe it will help DD's GCSE studies either.
That's an hour we will never get back...

I agree. If she has to have sex with for the money, after going to him with a payment plan for a loan, there's no way he can be redeemed. Running around buying massive geese and making merry in the streets throwing money around won't make up for that. Can't wait for tomorrow night.

He is so evil that I can't see how he deserves that happy ending, it would be a joke. In the book he's just a miserable grim old man, obsessive about money, with no love or sympathy for anyone. In this, he has caused loss of many lives, with the mining incident and the factory fire, and has apparently forced his young clerk's wife to have sex with him. Who could want him to have any redemption at all? And what happened to Fezziwig!? Too light and warm a scene for this production!

All this grimness and sex and dark stuff and yet too coy to keep Scrooges' sister's name as Fanny!?

I'm really hoping he wants her to come over to do the ironing or a bit of light gardening.

Since there are no muppets I didn't watch it!

And at least that stuck to the text!

Also they changed the name of Scrooge's young lover to Elizabeth. She is Belle in the book.

Yes they've missed out the slightly cheerier scene of him as a young man with his fiancée I think or as a an older student ( haven't studied text for 10 years'.)

I am really enjoying this. It's refreshing to see a different take on what makes Scrooge the man he is

And politically, how relevant to where we are

Cratchit is right. Easy enough to Google, surely?

Great adaptation.

It's not an adaptation though, it's far too different. As someone upthread remarked, they should have changed the name and made it clear it was loosely based on the book.

If you listen to what he says to Mrs Cratchit he’s talking about a social experiment to see how far she’ll go. I don’t get the impression he’s supposed to have any interest in actually having sex with her, he’s just playing a nasty manipulative power game to see if he can get her to agree to it. Then when she does eventually agree to save her son he’ll say no thanks but you’ve just demonstrated that I’m right, there’s no such thing as love and fidelity as it all has a price- or some rubbish like that.

Still, even if it’s not as bad as actually coercing someone into sex over their sick child he’s still using her as a pawn in his sadistic mind games rather than a person and can that really be redeemed?

Or I’m wrong and he does force her to actually prostitute herself but that seems unlikely.

I'm racking my brains thinking about what he will be asking Mrs Cratchit to do. The indecent proposal scenario will result in a completely different ending to the book surely? Maybe that's what will happen. He won't get his redemption and will end up being in a grave being pissed on for eternity with re runs of his dad killing his poor pet rat forever (I couldn't watch that bit ).

Kiki, I like your theory. However Scrooge obviously has a hold over her. Something happened that she doesn't want to tell her husband about.

He would still have a hold over her though, if he knew she had agreed to his plan, whether or not it was carried out.Neither of them would ever forget it. I'm wondering too if it was just a twisted horrible trick.

I do hope that's true Clawdy. Still despicable but he could still just about redeem himself if he doesn't go through with it physically.

This is on at 10pm tomorrow. Something cheerful to watch after A Christmas Carol
www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2019/52/martins-close

I'm also hoping that he is just testing Mrs Cratchit to see whether she passes or fails, so that he can laugh at her if she turns up.

I don't usually google over the spelling of a name in a thread if it is obvious who I'm talking about. Can we drop this now?