Title:
Nan’s
Christmas Carol
Format:
Multi-camera
video comedy special, with single-camera inserts
Country:
UK
Production
company:
Tiger Aspect
Productions, for BBC One
Year:
2009 (first
broadcast on BBC One on December 25th that year)
Length:
50 minutes
Setting:
Contemporary UK
Background:
That rarest of
things – a British television adaptation of the Carol actually getting
its debut broadcast on a major channel on the day itself! Nan had been one of
the central recurring characters in The Catherine Tate Show, a vehicle
for the eponymous actress and comedian which had made it and her both hugely
popular in the 2000s. The foul-mouthed, plain-speaking Nan was a perfect
candidate for the Scrooge role in this admittedly rather fast-and-loose parody
of the tale, and Nan’s Christmas Carol was the last big offering of BBC
One’s Christmas night line-up this particular year.
Cast and crew:
Catherine Tate is an
accomplished actress of both stage and screen, having starred in major roles on
the West End and also being a co-star of Doctor Who during one of its
biggest periods of popular success and critical acclaim, in 2008. In fact she’d
returned for the then-annual Doctor Who Christmas special just a few
hours before Nan’s Christmas Carol was broadcast – Christmas Day at this
point still being a major day for the main British broadcasters, when they made
a big effort to win the higher-than-usual audiences of gathered families on
offer.
As he had in the
sketch shows, Matthew Horne plays Nan’s grandson – he’d starred in his own
runaway comedy success in the decade, the BBC Three sitcom Gavin &
Stacey. Tate’s Doctor Who co-star David Tennant puts in a guest
appearance as the Ghost of Christmas Present, as does actor and comedian Ben Miller of the Armstrong & Miller duo, as Christmas Past. Roger Lloyd-Pack,
veteran of many a BBC One Christmas Day centrepiece from his role in the sitcom
Only Fools and Horses, rounds out the trio as the final spirit.
Tate co-wrote the
script with regular collaborators Aschlin Ditta and Gordon Anderson; Anderson
also directed, as he had done on the main series.
 |
| This is Madness! |
Underdone Potato:
Nan is visited by
her grandson Jamie on Christmas Eve, and as the audience would expect she’s in
a typically foul mood and unimpressed by the idea of festive fun. After turning
away some carol singers – who are, randomly the band Madness – their relatives
the Cratchits turn up, Nan having drunkenly invited them to spend Christmas
with her at a previous family gathering. The father of the family is, of course,
Bob, and as well as two children they have a dog called Tiny Tim.
Nan, particularly
unimpressed by the fact that their Christmas present to her is a donation on
her behalf to the Mobile Library of the Sudan, sends them packing, leaving them
with nowhere to spend Christmas. After Jamie leaves in disgust, Nan goes to bed,
where she is haunted by the ghost of her late husband, Jake, who died seven
years ago this very night.
Jake isn’t chained,
although he does complain that as the suit she had him buried him was the one
he married her in, it is rather small for him and the belt now constantly bites
into him. There’s quite a fun joke about the number of spirits he warns Nan
will be visiting her – does the three include him, or not? – and a surprising
moment of pathos at the end of his section too, as he laments that he misses
her and it’s lonely in the afterlife without her.
 |
| Tate playing closer to her actual age, as the younger Nan. |
Past:
Ben Miller plays
the Ghost of Christmas Past as a bumbling, incompetent spirit of someone from
the 19th century, who smashes through doors and tables rather than
passing through them insubstantially, insisting that he is out of practice as
it is “seasonal work.” He does, however, impress Nan by being able to instantly
transport her to her childhood in the 1930s.
We also see the
1950s and the 1970s, with the production having the same advantage that the Albert
Finney version did – their Scrooge is played by a younger person aged-up, so
they can appear younger in the past sections without the old-age make-up on. It’s
quite fun to see the younger versions of Nan delivering some of her typical
lines, including this version’s equivalent of “bah, humbug” – “Christmas – what
a load of old shit!”
Present:
David Tennant
gets a big reaction from the studio audience when he dances onto set to the Ghostbusters
theme tune. He plays the Ghost of Christmas Present as a rather camp cross
between Russell Brand and Alan Cumming, and if I had to guess I would say that
this section was the one which had the most cut from it in the edit.
He shows Nan only
two scenes – the lottery syndicate she’s been scamming checking their numbers,
and the Cratchit family waiting at a bus station to go home. When taking Nan
from one to the other, the ghost says that there is “one more family” he wants
to show her; an odd line if he’s only shown her one anyway, so perhaps a ‘present’
section with grandson Jamie was cut?
In any case, we
see the Cratchits feeding Tiny Tim a crisp, which kills him – so another version
where the Scrooge equivalent is blamed a bit more directly for Tim’s death.
 |
| David Tennant as the Ghost of Christmas Present. |
Yet to Come:
Oddly, despite having
his face visible and speaking, Roger Lloyd-Pack seems the closest to the
traditional depiction of his spirit – although he is called “Christmas Future,”
which usually happens more in American versions rather than British ones.
Perhaps he just seems to suit the character because he’s quite tall and, well…
deathly! He is dressed more in the traditional manner, anyway.
He shows Nan her
syndicate’s numbers coming up the following Christmas – but of course she hasn’t
bothered buying the tickets for them, only kept the money herself. We also see
her grandson having abandoned her, and she’s left sad and alone with nobody coming
to visit her in an old people’s home – just abuse from those she swindled.
What’s To-Day:
Surprisingly, Nan
does seem to have a genuine change of heart about Christmas, calling to the ‘boy’
outside – actually Jamie again – to go and get her a goose, or at least a
frozen chicken from the corner shop. Everyone is invited round for a sumptuous feast
prepared by celebrity chef James Martin, about whom there’d been a gag earlier
in the show, and there are even gifts for the Cratchit children.
Madness turn up
again, and the whole thing turns into a variety show as they break into Baggy
Trousers, with Suggs and Tate taking up hand mics to sing it together. There is,
however, a post-credits scene which may give the sting in the tail many of the
audience would perhaps have been expecting, as Nan feeds a crisp to Tiny Tim
the dog, suggesting that she wants to kill him off and perhaps isn’t so changed
after all.
Review:
This isn’t
laugh-a-minute, and isn’t in the same league as probably its closest similar
version, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. But it is quite good fun, and especially
so if you’re familiar with Nan from The Catherine Tate Show. However, unlike
the Blackadder version it probably does still work as a stand-alone,
too.
There are some
nicely-taken gags about the Carol, such as whether or not Marley is counting
himself as a Spirit, and the likelihood of anywhere being open on Christmas
Day. Some of the other jokes, though, are interesting in the sense that even
just ten years on, I wondered whether or not they would do some of them ‘these
days’. Not that they’re particularly controversial, but there might be more of a
sensitivity about causing offence or being crass, perhaps.
In a nutshell:
Not the greatest
or most spectacular version of the Carol ever made, but as an
out-and-out comedy / parody version, not bad.
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