A Christmas Carol - 2018, film

Title:

A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Digitally-released feature film for online streaming
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
Zoghogg Studios
 
Year:
2018
 
Length:
75 minutes
 
Setting:
Contemporary Scotland
 
Background:
Another straight-to-streaming effort of the kind we’re seeing with increasing frequency, this was released direct to Amazon Prime’s video service in 2018, although according to its IMDb page it has also had some television screenings in countries such as Greece and Turkey. It’s one of the few adaptations of the Carol – the first that I know of for sure, anyway – to have been shot in Scotland, where production company Zoghogg is based.
 
Cast and crew:
Zoghogg is run by David Izatt, who directed A Christmas Carol – his first feature film. Izatt seems to have been primarily a photographer, before moving into cinematography and then full-blown directing with this film. He wrote the script alongside producer Stuart Brennan, who also stars as Scrooge. Brennan has a long list of producing, directing and acting credits on his IMDb page, but frankly nothing you’ll have heard of.
 
Izatt himself makes an appearance as a baker, and fellow Zoghogg team member and ‘face of Scotch Beef’ Chris Capaldi is another original character, which probably gives you some idea of the talent pool from which they were fishing. Probably the best-known cast member is Bonnie Wright as Nell – as a child, Wright featured as Ginny Weasley throughout the Harry Potter film series.
 
By far and away the biggest name involved in the production, however is Roger Taylor – yes the drummer from Queen – who provided the music. Taylor’s wife Sarina also appears in the film, as this production’s version of Bob “Cratchett”.

Underdone Potato:
Scrooge in this version is the owner of a whisky distillery, although this doesn’t actually become clear until a little way in. What does become clear fairly quickly is his mean streak, firing a couple of his 2500-odd employees for being five minutes late, and pointing out to them the calculation for a month’s worth of someone’s salary he’d lose across the year if everybody was five minutes late.
 
Back in his office, we get versions of all the standard opening segments, although with some interesting changes made to them. The charity collectors, for example – a pair of young women called Charity and Grace, in not the script’s only example of not being particularly subtle – are called back in after initially being dismissed, and given a staggering donation of a quarter of a million pounds. Bob is amazed, until when they’ve gone again Scrooge points out that the money is the £100 Christmas bonus all his employees were entitled to, which he can now make tax deductible. I suppose his assumption is they’ll look churlish complaining that he gave their bonuses to charity – specified as the British Heart Foundation in this case.
 
Fred also turns up during this sequence – indeed, we’re told it’s he who let the charity collectors in – but rather than being Scrooge’s nephew on this occasion, their roles are reversed and he’s his uncle. He asks Scrooge to come around for Christmas the following day, but of course Ebenezer is not keen. For reasons which are not explained, Fred has turned up in full Scots ceremonial dress.

There’s a version of the exchange with Bob about her not working on Christmas Day and being in all the earlier on the 26^th, before an odd scene with a woman called Carol – again, not very subtle – who I mistakenly assumed was this version’s interpretation of Belle, as she appeared to be a ‘lost love’. She asks Scrooge for a lift home when he’s just got into his chauffeur-driven car, as she just happened to be passing for some reason, but what she sees what a miserable bastard he is decides to get the bus instead.
 
Someone who does join Scrooge on the way home, however, is Marley, who appears to him on the journey. It’s quite a harsh and brutal interpretation of the character, and as his warnings continue once Scrooge has arrived home there is some dialogue from the ghost saying that he was always bad but Scrooge wasn’t, which is why he can be redeemed. No chains in this version, although they are mentioned so are presumably meant to be more on the metaphorical side.
 
Past:
The Ghost of Christmas Past is a young woman in this version, played very well by Rebecca Hanssen despite the fact that she’s unfortunately been saddled with a costume which looks as if the Spirit picked it up from Ann Summers.

The Ghost of Ann Summers Past...

 
Fortunately this doesn’t distract too much, especially as we rarely actually see her during the visions – while Scrooge is present in all of them, for much of the time the Spirit herself is only a disembodied voice. A good job too, as she’d catch her death of cold going around various Decembers in that get-up.
 
We learn quite a bit about Scrooge’s early life through this section. We see his schooldays, but rather than a sister coming to collect him to return him home, we see him being told of hits parents’ death in a car crash – Fred, we learn, raised him through most of his teenage years.
 
There is then a surprising relocation to the USA, which I’d assumed was done by getting hold of some stock shots of an American city and one or two Scottish-based American actors, but there are some credits at the end for a US production unit, so it appears at least some shooting was actually done there. Scrooge and Marley set up their business over there, seemingly originally with this adaptation’s version of Fezziwig as a partner, before Scrooge persuaded Marley to base the operation in Scotland – despite Marley not being keen to return home. Fezziwig, being an American, presumably didn’t make the journey.

Nice Christmas jumper, young Scrooge!

There’s a link back to the start here, with Scrooge witnessing Marley fire an employee for being five minutes late, and explaining how much money it costs the company. The younger Scrooge was clearly troubled by this, but doesn’t intervene on the employee’s behalf, another indicator that Marley was always the harder of the pair.
 
We also see Scrooge’s romance with a fellow English person, a woman called Nell – not sure why they thought that was preferable to Belle as it’s an equally old-fashioned, and indeed Dickensian, name. There’s no happy ending for Nell in this version after she and Scrooge part – we learn that she died a year later, although we’re not told how.
 
Speaking of death, the final vision of the past with which Scrooge is presenter is his scattering of Marley’s ashes, soon after they’d brought the business to Scotland. Again, there’s no explanation as to how or why he died, but given his reluctance to come back home, Scrooge’s admission that he forced him into it and his earlier having chastised Marley’s ghost for “leaving”, I wonder whether there’s supposed to be an implication of suicide here?
 
Present:
Mark Lyminster’s performance as The Ghost of Christmas Present is one of the weaker ones here, not helped by being saddled with lines such as being called “The Goose of Christmas Present” because he “likes a good stuffing” – a line straight out of the old Alan Partridge Christmas special and Mark Eldon’s “Fanny Thomas” celebrity chef character.

 
The script does redeem itself somewhat, however, with an interesting twist on the start of this section – the Spirit asking Scrooge to pick any random passer-by on the street for them to follow their Christmas. Scrooge picks what turns out to be an unemployed and ill man named Reginald Thompson, who it turns out helps run a children’s choir and is picking pennies of the street to try and help pay for a horse for a Christmas present for one of the children in it and… Yeah, okay, perhaps the script hasn’t redeemed itself that much.
 
There’s a nice version of the Cratchit – sorry, Cratchett – scene, however, with another interesting difference in this version in that Tim is Bob’s husband rather than one of the children. He’s dying, in fact, of cancer, and interesting at the end of the film there is no indication that Scrooge will be able to do anything to help him after his redemption.

Not-so-Tiny Tim

 
Instead of there being a party at Fred’s house, we see him and some friends and family out walking, but their discussion of Scrooge is substantially similar to that from the book, even comparing him to an animal as happens there.
 
Yet to Come:
This Spirit is never seen, but only heard – yes, it speaks in this version, although only the odd, heavily-treated word. There does seem to be something which appears to Scrooge, however, as he does look at it.

There’s a nice mix of both the businessmen and Old Joe scenes into one, as Scrooge sees a group of schoolgirls discussing his death, and as well as talking about what a disagreeable person he was, they mention how his bedsheets were probably worth more than a car.
 
We also get a scene of a rather bleak Christmas at the Cratchetts after Tim’s death, and finally Scrooge learns who the children were discussing when he sees his tombstone.
 
What’s To-Day:
In a modern update I quite liked, Scrooge hears the news that it’s Christmas Day by switching on the radio, rather than shouting down to a boy in the street. Although I suppose the radio itself is quite an old-fashioned way of doing it, these days!
 
Having already given the charity collectors a quarter of a million pounds right at the start, he doesn’t meet up with either of them again. Instead, there’s a bit of business with two bakers at a bakery, whose entire stock of cakes and treats he has bought-up and sent to where he knows the community will soon be gather to present that horse to the little girl from the choir.

He goes along to that part of town himself and knock on the Cratchetts’ door, firing her and then re-hiring her on a much better salary. He also re-hires the two employees who we saw him getting rid of at the start of the film. “He’s not as bad as you said he was, mum!” one of the Cratchett children points out, which I thought was quite a nice touch.
 
Finally, he meets up with Carol again, and heads off to Fred’s for Christmas dinner with her and the family. Carol gives him a scarf as a present, which he is very touched by, in a scene reminiscent of Scrooge being given the same gift in the Muppet version.
 
Review:
It’s funny how similar versions sometimes come only a few days apart, quite by chance, here on the blog. Two days ago I posted a review of a very similar American versionfrom 2019 – a low-budget but mostly competently made and performed direct-to-streaming version, set in the present day among a certain community, with the lead actor playing Scrooge not being part of that community. In that case it was the Hispanic community in Florida, whereas here despite being a Scottish production Scrooge himself is English.
 
The feel of the production – a slightly other-worldly, almost parallel-universe atmosphere to it – also put me in mind of the Black Mirror episode Crocodile, which had a similar alternative reality aesthetic with its British cast in Icelandic locations. The dialogue here also contributes to the feeling of it not quite being the real world as we know it. Despite being set in the present day, Scrooge speaks in a very Victorian or cod-Victorian manner much of the time. He also has a sword in his house, for some reason, which he uses early on to try and warn off the coming Spirits.

"Listen, have you heard the one about the three ghosts...?"

I didn’t dislike that approach, however, and it does make this version feel quite distinctive. That’s not so say it’s a perfect script – the whole Carol thing is a bit odd and unexplained, and information sometimes comes at you in an odd order. However, it’s shot well, the performances are almost all decent, and as you’d expect when you have Roger Taylor on duty the music is very good, particularly some nicely atmospheric eighties-style synth parts over bleak Scottish landscapes. There’s also a very nice graphics sequence for the opening titles, too.
 
In a nutshell:
While not a top-rank version, this isn’t bad and is a perfectly good watch if you want a more obscure version of the story.
 
Links:
Amazon Prime
IMDb