A Christmas Carol - 1984, television

Title:
A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
TV movie
 
Country:
USA / UK
 
Production company:
Entertainment Partners Ltd
 
Year:
1984 (first broadcast on the CBS network in the US on December 17^th that year, but also given a cinema release in the UK earlier that month)
 
Length:
97 minutes
 
Setting:
Victorian
 
Background:
Made by a US company for a US television network, this was nonetheless film in Britain – with location filming in Shrewsbury – with a predominantly British cast and crew, much like the later 1999 version with Patrick Stewart. However, unlike that later version this one actually saw cinematic release outside of the USA, being given a limited theatrical run in the UK in December 1984, before receiving its TV premiere on the CBS network in the United States. It was released on video in the UK later in the 1980s, before finally being given its British TV premiere on the ITV network on the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1989. Since then it’s been a TV regular every Christmas on one channel or the other in the US, the UK and various other countries around the world, becoming perhaps one of the most familiar versions of the tale to many people.

Cast and crew:
The star of the show is George C. Scott, the prominent American film actor who is probably best remembered for starring in the 1970 film Patton, the story of the eponymous Second World War general. While Scott clearly couldn’t master an English accent for the part and leaves us with a very American-sounding Scrooge, there’s no doubt that he does bring a definite presence to the role. He would later be cast as Scrooge again in a Los Angeles stage adaptation of the story in 1989, but due to disagreements over funding left before the run opened.
 
In common with the 1970 musical version, the supporting parts are absolutely stuffed to the rafters with some of the finest British character actors of their generations. Susannah York, who’d co-starred with 1970 Scrooge Albert Finney in 1963’s Tom Jones, appears here as Mrs Cratchit, with two of her own children, Sasha and Orlando Wells, appearing as Belinda Cratchit and an unnamed Cratchit sibling.
 
Bob himself is played by David Warner, familiar from a huge range of film and television parts from the 1960s to the present day. Stage star Frank Finlay is Marley; Callan, The Wicker Man and The Equalizer star Edward Woodward as a suitably jovial Ghost of Christmas Present. Joanne Whalley, soon to find fame in Edge of Darkness and The Singing Detective, plays Fan, while fellow British TV star Caroline Langrishe – well-known in the 1990s for co-starring in later series of Lovejoy – appears as Fred’s wife, Janet. Fred himself is played with good humour by Welsh actor Roger Rees, who West Wing fans will remember as the foppish British ambassador Lord John Marbury. Michael Gough, an esteemed British actor of film and television who would go to experience a late career renaissance as Batman’s butler Alfred in the 1989 film, pops up as one of the two charitable gentlemen. Speaking of actors known for cult roles, young Scrooge Mark Strickson had at the time just finished a run in Doctor Who as Turlough, a companion of the Doctor.

Right, said Fred...

 
Of particular note is the casting of Liz Smith as Mrs Dilber. Smith, who would go on to be a regular in acclaimed British sitcoms The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family in the 1990s, would later play exactly the same role in the 1999 Patrick Stewart version – and a different character in 2000’s ITV adaptation with Ross Kemp.
 
Director Clive Donner was British, and having begun his career as an editor had actually worked in that capacity on the famous 1951 version starring Alistair Sim. The screenwriter was Roger O. Hirsin, who was best known for his theatre work but also had an extensive list of television and film credits going back to the 1950s – including for the Alcoa Hour, the anthology series in which the 1956 version was broadcast, although Hirsin had no involvement with that production. Doctor Who fans will also recognise the credit for Roger Murray-Leach as designer; he’d undertaken the same role on several Doctor Who serials in the 1970s.
 
Underdone Potato:
There’s a taste of another Christmas tradition near the start, as we hear a band in the street playing an instrumental version of the carol In Dulci Jubilo. By 1984 this had already had a new lease of life, in Britain at least, as a famous pop recording by Mike Oldfield, now a Christmas standard in the UK and which would have immediately come to mind for anyone watching the film there.

The character of Fred fairly often gets to deliver Dickens’s closing narration in various versions, but here he also gets to open the thing, delivering a few lines in voiceover of the “Marley was dead…” passage. Speaking of Fred, his arrival in the office is treated in quite an odd way by Scrooge. The old miser seems rather amused by his own jibes about wanting people who celebrate Christmas boiled with their own puddings, laughing away in a manner which seems rather at odds with the usual depiction of the pre-redemption Ebenezer.
 
As happens in various other versions, Tim comes into the story somewhat early, and Scrooge meets him outside the office. The reason for this is that the usual office scene is split between two locations – Scrooge leaves to go to the exchange, which is where he meets the two charitable gentlemen in this version. He also meets the three businessmen who are the ones later to be seen discussing his funeral arrangements in the Yet-to-Come segment.
 
Past:
Angela Pleasance as the Ghost of Christmas Past is a more explicitly female version than in Dickens, and also very of-her-time – something about the hair and make-up makes her look as if she’s just stepped off the set of a New Romantic pop video.

"Turn around, bright eyes..."

 
Scrooge is given an even unhappier earlier life in this version than he had in the book. He tells the Spirit that his mother died giving birth to him, and thus his father resents him. Even when Fan appears to say their father has said he can come home, the man himself also makes an appearance and sternly informs them it will be for only three days, before young Ebenezer is packed off to be an apprentice at Fezziwig’s.
 
An unusual inclusion which is often skipped over in many adaptations is the young Scrooge’s love of reading, with Ali Baba getting a mention here. Although, unlike the 1982 animation or the 2019 TV version, Baba himself doesn’t actually put in an appearance.
 
The Fezziwigs’ party is suitably jolly, and as is common Belle puts in an appearance there, rather than only being seen for the first time when she’s leaving Scrooge. The leaving scene is done in full, and even with some extra bits added, with Scrooge telling the spirit that he nearly ran after her. The second Belle scene is also present, fairly unusually, and the script stays quite faithful to the original by having Scrooge snuff out the Spirit’s light to eventually get rid of it.
 
Present:
When the Ghost of Christmas Present first takes Scrooge out from his rooms to the various visions, the effect looks a little like they’re being beamed up in Star Trek.
 
There’s a brief sequence at a market on Christmas Day in the morning, and Scrooge and the Spirit talk about his torch spreading cheer – although it isn’t really particularly demonstrated. We then get the two main scenes usually displayed in this section, at the Cratchits’ and at Fred’s house. There’s an interesting change made to the Cratchit section, where Bob’s lines about meeting Fred in the street have been transplanted from Yet-to-Come to here. Not unusually, Bob’s mere supposition that Fred might find a job for Peter is turned into there having been a definite offer of a job made.

It's a little-known fact that the Ghost of Christmas Present
filled in time between hauntings as a TV game show host...

At Fred’s there is game-playing and a joke or two at Scrooge’s expense, although the game isn’t “Yes and No” or any of the other games played in other versions I’ve seen. In this case, it’s a game called “Similes” which the gathered friends are playing. Topper’s role is greatly reduced, and there is nothing of his amorous aspirations.
 
The section finishes with an invented scene of a young couple and their children beneath a bridge, with the Spirit showing Scrooge some of those who are suffering at Christmas and giving a callback to his earlier thoughts about the institutions which exist to support such people. Ignorance and Want are present beneath the Spirit’s robes to finish things off, but there’s no explicit ageing of the Spirit in this particular version – indeed, he does drop the odd hint that this hasn’t been his first and won’t be his last visit to Earthly affairs.
 
Yet to Come:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come is very effectively realised in its usual robes, and works particularly well when we see its pointing gestures with oddly long, skeletal fingers shown in shadow. What perhaps works slightly less well is an attempt to show it eerily gliding across a graveyard late on, with the effect not quite working and giving an unintentionally comic effect as the thing seems to roll right across the screen as if on wheels.

We see the Cratchits mourning Tim’s death pretty much as-written, although some of Bob’s lines are split between him and his wife in this version, which is fair enough. There’s no scene of the couple in debt being glad about Scrooge having died, but we do have Scrooge unable to lift the shroud, and the Old Joe sequence. This has been slimmed down a bit, with Mrs Dilber coming to him alone, rather than ending up meeting the laundress there as well.
 
A slight oddity comes at the end of this sequence, when Scrooge wakes up, finds himself back in his rooms, but then rather than springing into action promptly falls back to sleep again. I can only imagine this was done to be able to put an advert break in at this point, this having been a production originally made for commercial television, after all.
 
What’s To-Day:
Once Scrooge does finally get up and about, he throws off his dressing gown to remind of us something present in the Dickens text but forgotten by almost all interpreters of it – that Scrooge went to bed fully-clothed.
 
We have the regular antics of the boy being sent for the turkey, and there’s a nice addition of the poulterer being worried that it’s a prank when he accompanies the boy back to Scrooge’s with it. There’s also a nice reference to the line one of the charitable gentlemen has early in the story asking Scrooge if he “wishes to remain anonymous”, which is how the poulterer describes the donor of the turkey to Cratchit when he delivers it.
 
There’s a lot more original material not present in the book here, particularly in the conversation between Scrooge and Fred and his wife when he comes round for Christmas dinner. But it all ends back at the story as written, with Scrooge teasing Bob in the office on Boxing Day morning. As is not uncommon, the character of Fred gets to deliver the closing narration – or at least, Roger Rees does, as the script has him refer to “Ebenezer Scrooge” as if it’s not his uncle, which makes you wonder if Rees is supposed to be the omnipotent voice of Dickens rather than Fred here.

Review:
When I was a child this was one of the first versions of the Carol I saw, and it was always one of my favourites. As an adult I can look back on it with a slightly more critical eye, especially when comparing it to other versions. Particularly when compared to its fellow late 20^th century versions of 1970 and 1999, it probably does come up a little wanting.
 
Aside from Scott’s accent, the performances are all pretty good, but unfortunately the script is a little clunky at times. It’s a less secular version of the story than the original, which seems a churlish thing to complain about in a Christmas story, and Dickens himself of course makes Christian allusions and references at points. But having an illustration of The Last Supper in Scrooge’s rooms, having him give an ‘amen’ to Bob Cratchit’s prayer of grace… It all feels a little out-of-kilter with the story at hand, somehow.
 
The clunkiness of the script is also present in some of the dialogue at moments when it diverts from the Dickens. People who know perfectly well who each other are refer to one another as “husband” and “brother-in-law” for the benefit of the audience. Hirsin does use original Dickens dialogue as at least the basis for his where he can, but he does have an annoying habit of perhaps over-simplifying it a little – shortening and tidying up bits which don’t really need it, which ends up removing some of my favourite lines here and there.
 
Nonetheless, all of the most famous and familiar parts of the story are included fairly faithfully, and where Hirsin does make his own inventions they tend to be additions to or extensions of existing moments from the book. He doesn’t make the same drastic additions or adjustments that, say, the 1951 version does, which is one of the reasons why I prefer this version over that one.
 
In a nutshell:
Not a perfect adaptation of the Carol – there probably never can be such a thing, of course. But although a touch saccharine at times, it is certainly one of the best to have been made for television
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb