The three-part series is written by Steven Knight with actor Tom Hardy and Ridley Scott among the executive producers.
Cast members include Hardy, Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge, Andy Serkis as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Stephen Graham as Jacob Marley, Charlotte Riley as Lottie and Joe Alwyn as Bob Cratchit.
The BBC has television plans of Dickensian proportions! A series of small screen adaptations of the 19th century literary works of Charles Dickens are on the way, and the Beeb has tapped Steven Knight, the mastermind behind the hit series Peaky Blinders, to head this ambitious initiative.
The Beeb has commissioned the series of Dickens TV adaptations, in which Steven Knight will work to create what is being called “a box set of Dickens’s most iconic novels,” to be rolled out in the next few years. The first adaptation will be A Christmas Carol, the definitive Noel novel, famously depicting the miserly misanthrope Ebenezer Scrooge in his journey of philanthropic self-discovery by way of time-travelling spirits.
A Christmas Carol cast – some of the best
The main cast for A Christmas Carol was announced earlier in the year.
Guy Pearce (Mary Queen Of Scots) is playing Ebenezer Scrooge, Andy Serkis (Black Panther) is the Ghost of Christmas Past, Stephen Graham (This Is England) is Jacob Marley, Charlotte Riley (Peaky Blinders) is Lottie, Joe Alwyn (The Favourite) is Bob Cratchit, Vinette Robinson (Doctor Who) is Mary Cratchit, the late Rutger Hauer (True Blood) is the Ghost of Christmas Future, Kayvan Novak (What We Do In The Shadows) is Ali Baba and Lenny Rush (Old Boys) is Tim Cratchit.
Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter old man, despises the Christmas holiday. Over the course of Christmas Eve night he is visited by three ghosts to show him his past, present and future.
Ebenezer Scrooge is the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novella, Scrooge is a cold-hearted miser who despises Christmas. Dickens describes him thus: “The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.” Towards the end of the novella, Scrooge is transformed by ghosts into a better person who changed his ways to become more friendly and less miserly.
His last name has come into the English language as a byword for miserliness and misanthropy. The tale of his redemption by the three Ghosts of Christmas (Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) has become a defining tale of the Christmas holiday in the English-speaking world. Ebenezer Scrooge is arguably both one of the most famous characters created by Dickens and one of the most famous in English literature.
Scrooge’s catchphrase, “Bah! Humbug!” is often used to express disgust with many modern Christmas traditions
Jacob Marley is a fictional character who appears in Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. He is Ebenezer Scrooge’s deceased business partner, now a chained and tormented ghost, doomed to wander the earth forever as punishment for his greed and selfishness when he was alive. Marley roams restlessly, witnessing the hardships others suffer and lamenting that he has forever lost his chance to help them. Marley arranges for the three spirits to visit Scrooge and gives his friend an opportunity for redemption, which Marley tells him was “…a chance and hope of my procuring.”
The Ghost of Christmas Past is the first of the three spirits (after the visitation by Jacob Marley, his former business partner) to haunt Ebenezer Scrooge. This angelic and caring spirit shows Scrooge scenes from his past that occurred on or around Christmas, in order to demonstrate to him the necessity of changing his ways, as well as to show the reader how Scrooge came to be a bitter, cold-hearted miser.
The Ghost of Christmas Past appears to Scrooge as a white-robed, androgynous figure of indeterminate age. It has on its head a blinding light, reminiscent of a candle flame, and carries a metal cap, made in the shape of a candle extinguisher.The light symbolises the way he is shining light on Scrooge’s memories. The cap symbolises our ability to suppress memories.
- The Ghost of Christmas Past takes his hand and flies with him over London. It first shows Scrooge his old boarding school, where he stayed alone, but for his books, while his schoolmates returned to their homes for the Christmas holidays.
- The spirit then shows Scrooge the day when his beloved younger sister Fan picked him up from the school after repeatedly asking their cold, unloving father to allow his return, as she joyfully claims that he has changed and is now kinder than he was.
- Next, the spirit shows Scrooge a Christmas Eve a few years later in which he enjoys a Christmas party hosted by his first boss, Mr. Fezziwig, a kind and loving man, who treated Scrooge like a son and was more compassionate to him than was his own father.
- The spirit also shows Scrooge the Christmas Eve when, as a young man, his beloved fiancée Belle ended their relationship upon realizing that he now cared more for money than he did for her. Scrooge did not ask Belle to end their engagement, but he did not fight to keep her
- .Finally, the spirit shows him how she married and found true happiness with another man. After this vision, Scrooge pleads with the spirit to show him no more, to which the spirit replies:
These are the shadows of things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me!
Angered, Scrooge extinguishes the spirit with its cap and finds himself back in his bedroom, where he very quickly fell asleep.
The Ghost of Christmas Present is the second of the three spirits (after the visitations by Jacob Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Past) that haunt the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, in order to prompt him to repent. He shows Scrooge how other people, especially those he knows, celebrate Christmas in order to show the reader what people think of Scrooge behind his back.
- The Ghost of Christmas Present appears to Scrooge as “a jolly giant” with dark brown curls. He wears a fur-lined green robe and on his head a holly wreath set with shining icicles. He carries a large torch, made to resemble a cornucopia, and appears accompanied by a great feast. He states that he has had “more than eighteen hundred” brothers and later reveals the ability to change his size to fit into any space. He also bears a scabbard with no sword in it, a representation of peace on Earth and good will toward men.
- The spirit transports Scrooge around the city, showing him scenes of festivity and also deprivation that are happening as they watch, sprinkling a little warmth from his torch as he travels. Amongst the visits are the city streets, Scrooge’s nephew’s Christmas party.
- The family of his impoverished clerk, Bob Cratchit. Scrooge takes an interest in Cratchit’s desperately-ill son, Tiny Tim, and asks the Ghost if Tim will live. The Ghost first states that “If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die”, and then – quick to use Scrooge’s past heartless comments to two charitable solicitors against him – states, “What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population”.
- The spirit then warns Scrooge to “forebear that wicked tongue until you have discovered for yourself what the surplus is, and where it is” and chillingly tells him “It may be, that in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than MILLIONS like this poor man’s child”.
- The spirit finally reveals to Scrooge two emaciated children, subhuman in appearance and loathsome to behold, clinging to his robes, and names the boy as Ignorance and the girl as Want. The spirit warns Scrooge, “Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom unless the writing be erased”.[Ignorance and Want, represent society’s abandonment of the poor and the consequences of that abandonment. Above all else, A Christmas Carol is allegorical. Dickens was a strong proponent of taking care of society’s poor and downtrodden, and this is why he chose to represent them in children]. The spirit once again quotes Scrooge, who asks if the grotesque children have “no refuge, no resource”, and the spirit retorts with more of Scrooge’s own words: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”
- The Ghost of Christmas Present, having already aged, reveals that he will only exist on Earth for a “very brief” time, implied to be that single Christmas holiday.
- He finally disappears at the stroke of midnight on Twelfth Night, and leaves Scrooge to face the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, as it approaches “like a mist along the ground”.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come, also known as the Ghost of Christmas Future, sometimes the Spirit of Christmas Future, the Spirit of Christmas Yet-to-Come or the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Be.
“The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand.”
- Scrooge finds the Ghost of Christmas Future the most fearsome of the Spirits; it appears to Scrooge as a figure entirely muffled in a black hooded cloak, except for a single spectral hand with which it points. Although the character never speaks in the story, communicating entirely by pointing, Scrooge understands it, usually through assumptions from his previous experiences and rhetorical questions. It is notable that, even in satires and parodies of the tale, this spirit retains its original look.
- When the Ghost makes its appearance, the first thing it shows Scrooge is three wealthy gentlemen making light of a recent death, remarking that it will be a cheap funeral, if anyone comes at all. One businessman said he would go – but only if lunch is provided. Next, Scrooge is shown the same dead person’s belongings being stolen by Scrooge’s charwoman Mrs. Dilber, Scrooge’s laundress, and the local undertaker and sold to a fence called Old Joe. He also sees a shrouded corpse, which he implores the Ghost not to unmask. Scrooge asks the ghost to show anyone who feels any emotion over the man’s death.
- The ghost can only show him a poor couple indebted to the man momentarily rejoicing that the man is dead, giving them more time to pay off their debt.
- After Scrooge asks to see some tenderness connected with death, the ghost shows him Bob Cratchit and his family mourning the passing of Tiny Tim. The spirit then takes Scrooge to a rundown churchyard and shows the repentant miser his own grave; Scrooge then realizes that the dead man of whom the others spoke ill, was himself.
Horrified, Scrooge begs the ghost for another chance to redeem his life and “sponge away the writing on this stone”.
For the first time the hand appeared to shake. “Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”
The kind hand trembled.
Scrooge then watches as the Spirit’s robe shrinks to become his bedpost and finds that he is back in the present on Christmas morning. Along with the visions supplied by the other spirits, the ghost’s warnings about Scrooge’s future transform him into a better man.
In May, Guy Pearce was revealed to be playing Scrooge, alongside the castings of Andy Serkis, Stephen Graham, Charlotte Riley, Joe Alwyn, Vinette Robinson and Kayvan Novak. The Late Rutger Hauer, who was cast as Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, became too sick to film his scenes and was replaced by Jason Flemyng.
Cast
- Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge
- Andy Serkis as Ghost of Christmas Past
- Stephen Graham as Jacob Marley
- Charlotte Riley as Lottie/Ghost of Christmas Present
- Joe Alwyn as Bob Cratchit
- Vinette Robinson as Mary Cratchit
- Jason Flemyng as Ghost of Christmas Future
- Kayvan Novak as Ali Baba
- Lenny Rush as Tiny Tim
- Johnny Harris as Franklin Scrooge
- Tom Hardy as ?
Jinx 