A Christmas Carol - 1977, television

Given we’re looking at a story which is one of the great British institutions, I thought perhaps we’d start with a look at an adaptation made by one of the country’s other great institutions…

Title:

A Christmas Carol

Format:

Multi-camera video television studio play

Country:

UK

Production company:

BBC Television

Year:

1977 (first broadcast on BBC Two on Christmas Eve that year)

Length:

60 minutes

Setting:

Victorian

Background:
A one-off literary adaptation of the kind the BBC have long done and continue to do. From the era when the majority of British television drama was still made on video using the multi-camera studio system, something which now tends to be used only for non-fiction studio shows and some sitcoms.

Cast and crew:

There are plenty of familiar faces in this for even casual viewers of British film and television productions of the second half of the 20^th century. Michael Horden stars as Scooge, having previously done a reading of the book for BBC Television in 1963 and played Marley on two occasions, both opposite Alistair Sim. His own Marley on this occasion is John Le Mesurier, known to generations of British viewers as Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army, which came to an end the year this production was made.

James Bond’s original movie ‘M’, Bernard Lee, takes on the mantle of Ghost of Christmas Present; Christopher Biggins, in the days when he was still best known as an actor rather than simply as himself, has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turn as Topper; a young Zoe Wanamaker appears as Belle, while EastEnders’ June Brown (Dot Cotton to the soap opera fans) plays Scrooge’s laundress, Mrs Dilber. Clive Merrison puts in an excellent performance as Bob Cratchit; while his face may not be familiar, many Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts will know him from his role as Holmes in BBC Radio 4’s adaptations of all the detective’s adventures in the 1980s and 90s.

Behind-the-scenes, the credits are littered with names well-known to students of BBC television drama history, or to Doctor Who fans. On the Who front, designer Barry Newbery and producer Jonathan Powell will both be familiar; Powell – after producing the BBC’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People adaptations to great acclaim – later became a senior executive in the drama department and then Controller of BBC One, where he was responsible for cancelling the original run of Doctor Who in 1989.

Scriptwriter Elaine Morgan and script editor Betty Willingale were two of the most prominent women working on the scripting side of BBC television drama during the 1960s and 70s, with Willingale eventually enjoying a career of over half a century as a script editor and producer. Director Moira Armstrong enjoyed a similarly-lengthy career, including shortly after this collaborating with Powell, Morgan and Willingale in all the same roles on an award-winning serial adaptation of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth.

Having been twice a Marley, Michael Horden finally gets his turn in the main role.

Underdone Potato:

There’s a nice little bit of business invented for this adaptation where Scrooge, alone in his rooms just before Marley appears, hears a strange noise, and searches all around for it, becoming increasingly unsettled… Before he realises it’s the sound of his broth bubbling away in the fireplace as it starts to boil over.

The only look we get at the other spirits desperately walking the Earth is a brief glimpse of some spectres on the pavement beneath Scrooge’s window; there’s no sign of any of them desperately trying to assist or make contact with any of the living as in the novel.

Past:

The Spirit is traditionally depicted, although definitely more on the female side of androgny, and the business with the cap is retained, in part.

The school scenes are dealt with very quickly, but also manage to produce one of Elaine Morgan’s very few interruptions to the text with a new idea of her own; the Spirit mentions to Scrooge how Fan had asked him to always look out for her son’s welfare, making him feel guilty about having dismissed Fred earlier on.

Fezziwig’s party is also dealt with very briefly, and cheaply – and unlike in some other versions, Morgan doesn’t choose to deviate from the original by introducing Belle as a character at the party. Instead, as in the book we first meet her when she releases Scrooge from his promise of marriage, in probably the longest scene of the ‘past’ section. We do also then get the scene, often absent from adaptations, of Belle later in life, happily married with children, with her husband telling her how he happened to see Scrooge that day – and rather charmingly, the “doll’s frying pan” of the text even gets a mention in the dialogue here!

Present:

Bernard Lee won’t be remembered as one of the great Ghosts of Christmas Present, as he’s given almost nothing to do here; he and Scrooge aren’t even seen within the scenes they witness, as is usually the case. Lee has the traditional look and some of the manner, but is nowhere close to being the jolly giant of other adaptations. We see the two main scenes almost every adaptation includes here; the Cratchits at Christmas dinner, and the party at Fred’s house. It’s not much of a party, however, with only four of them present, and the one brief game over very quickly.

Clive Merrison is possibly about the best thing in this, as Bob Cratchit; no mean feat when you consider the array of acting talent present. It’s not that anybody else is bad, at all, it’s just that Merrison manages the rare achievement of making Cratchit seem like a real person. He’s not lumbered with too much of a dodgy accent, he doesn’t seem like too much of a drip or a doormat. He even manages to look a little bit like the Cratchit in the original illustrations, although quite a bit younger.

Paul Copley gives Fred a northern twang, although there’s no reason why Fan may not have married a northerner – indeed, perhaps her having fallen in love with and married someone of whom Scrooge disapproved may be one of the reasons for his distance from her son… But of course this is pure speculation, and not anything Elaine Morgan chooses to explore in her script here.

Ignorance and Want are here, although not unveiled from beneath the Spirit’s cloak, instead they’re skulking over a random table in the wastes of nowhere.

Yet to Come:

This section features Morgan’s most notable departure from the text, as the ‘Old Joe’ section actually takes place in Scrooge’s own chambers, with just Mrs Dilber taking the clothes and curtains, and the undertaker’s man nicking some of the silverware. While this scene has much the same effect as the original, it’s curious that Scrooge doesn’t at any point seem to realise where they are, and still wants to know who the dead man is.

Some tenderness connected with a death... Clive Merrison is perhaps the best of a good bunch of actors here.

What’s To-Day:

Generally all present and correct, as you’d expect – and there’s a nice invented sequence unique, I think, to this adaptation, with little traces left behind by some of ghosts are seen as Scrooge looks around some of the spots where they appeared in his room, before they suddenly disappear as they are mentioned. For example, when he says about how this was where Marley came in, we see one link of his chain left on the floor, before it abruptly vanishes.

The turkey is sent to the Cratchits, although we don’t see them receive it; we do see them eating it at the very end, however. Scrooge goes for dinner at Fred’s, and the next day plays his little trick on Cratchit, making him think he’s about to be sacked before telling him he’s going to raise his salary. There is no sign, however, of Scrooge giving any money to the two charity representatives, backpayments or not – although they were seen as usual earlier on, after Fred’s visit.

Unlike in some other adaptations, the closing passages of the novel, relating what became of Scrooge after this, becoming “as good a man, as the good old city knew,” isn’t present as narration, although “Marley was dead…” is used as narration at the start – read by Alvar Liddel, of all people, a distinguished BBC radio newsreader of the Second World War, which lends a certain gravitas.

Review:

Even though A Christmas Carol is a short work, when it comes to bringing it to the screen just an hour is still not quite enough to do the story justice. While all of the important elements are present and correct, many of them feel all-too-briefly dealt with; it has the feeling of being a hop, skip and a jump through the story, never allowing it enough space to really breathe.

It’s also very cheap-looking, even when being judged purely against the standards of other British multi-camera studio drama of the era. The cast feels tiny, with there rarely being more than three or four people in each scene, and the sets either very small or lit so that you don’t have to see much in the background. There’s no location filming at any point to help open out any aspects of the drama, and both the opening titles and the initial journey into the past take place with superimposed characters – using ‘Colour Separation Overlay’ (CSO) as the BBC of the time would have it – against paintings.

That said, a lot of the CSO work is very good, particularly when involving Marley’s scene – little or no fringing to be seen, and he’s integrated, half-transparent, into Scrooge’s chambers very well. Le Mesurier makes for a very vague and somewhat melancholy Marley, while Horden himself can be something of a bumbling Scrooge at times.

Neither performance – indeed, none of the performances – could be described as in any way bad, however, with the standard of acting being high throughout. It’s just a shame that so many of the actors get so little to do. Merrison’s excellent turn as Cratchit, however, does help with the reality of his scenes, and this adaptation never gets over-saccharine with regards to the Cratchits in general or Tiny Tim in particular, which can be a problem in some versions.

In a nutshell:

Given the hugely impressive CVs of the cast and crew, and the reputation of BBC television drama generally, this can’t help but be something of a disappointment. It feels too scaled-down and too rushed, a precis of the story rather than a full-blooded version. It would be nice to see the BBC go back and have a proper go at it again someday, but perhaps the chance has now passed.

Links:

BBC Programmes

BBC Genome

IMDb