Carry On Christmas - 1969, television

Title:

Carry On Christmas
 
Format:
Pre-recorded colour videotaped Christmas television comedy special
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
Thames Television
 
Year:
1969 – transmitted on the ITV network on December 24 that year
 
Length:
50 minutes
 
Setting:
Victorian
 
Background:
I strongly suspect that if you are the type of person who is interested in reading a blog like this, then you’re more than likely to already be familiar with the Carry On series.
 
But just in case…

The Carry Ons were a series of British comedy films which were released regularly from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, and for most of that run were hugely popular in the UK. They featured an ensemble cast of comic actors and comedians, most of whom were already household names or became so largely off the back of the success of the films. The series was in effect an anthology, with each one taking place in a different setting – some contemporary, some in assorted historical eras, some pretty much in the realms of fantasy.

 
Various members would come and go, but there was a core team of stars who appeared in almost all of the films. Most would usually always portray the same broad type of personality in each film, even when the specific character they were playing would vary depending on each film’s particular setting.
 
Even for many years after they stopped being made, the films would regularly be shown on the major British television channels. If you’re familiar with the Carry On films now and have a view on them, then you probably fall into broadly one of two camps. Either you regard them as extremely dated examples of the lowest common denominators of British comedy, filled with cheap, tawdry gags, hurtful stereotypes and, at their worst, misogynistic, homophobic and racist material. Or you might see them as harmless products of their time; something which might not be made today, perhaps, but which contained jokes at the expense of all rather than attacks on a few, were nothing worse than jocular ribaldry, and preserving the archetypal performances of some of the best-known British stars of their era.
 
The film series did give rise to a few television spin-offs, of which this was the first; produced by Thames Television, one of the companies which made up the ITV network in the UK, by arrangement with the film series’ producers.
 
Cast and crew:
The main cast here combines a few performers who were very well-known for their performances in the Carry On films with others who, although they had also appeared in the series, were primarily known for their other comedy roles elsewhere. The main regulars present are Sid James, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques and glamour stooge Barbara Windsor. Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth had only made a few Carry On appearances by the time of this special, but would appear in several more of the films through the 1970s, while Terry Scott and Frankie Howerd were not closely associated with Carry On but had made appearances in some of the films. Howerd, indeed, had only appeared in one of the films at this point, and is billed as ‘Guest Star’ here.

 

Certainly very closely associated with the series was the scriptwriter here, Talbot Rothwell. Although not the original writer for the films, he had become their most prolific writer and the one most closely associated with them. He did also work in television, co-writing Up Pompeii! which makes very similar use of Frankie Howerd directly addressing the audience as seen here – with Carry On Christmas indeed making a habit of breaking the fourth wall throughout.
 
Director Ronnie Baxter had a long career helming comedy for the small screen, probably most notably with Rising Damp in the 1970s. Producer Peter Eton, meanwhile, had overseen a very different type of comedy in the 1950s when he had been the producer of The Goon Show on BBC radio. The director of the Carry On films, Gerald Thomas, gets a credit here as ‘comedy consultant’.

Underdone Potato:
There’s not much preamble here, although there is a rapid indication of just how bad a character Scrooge is supposed to be when he actually blows up some carol singers. One interesting twist which might even work well in a more serious version is seeing Bresslaw as Bob Cratchit praying for a Christmas miracle; this is duly delivered by an angel played by Charles Hawtrey, who given he then goes on to portray the first ghost suggests you could say the ghosts were sent due to Cratchit’s prayer, rather than Marley’s intervention – especially given there is no version of Marley here.

 

Past:
Without old Jacob, we skip straight to the first of the three spirits – Hawtrey as the Ghost of Christmas Past, although he is initially depicted as also wearing the chains more typically associated with Marley. He shows Scrooge just a single vision, from only one year before, and not actually anything directly to do with Scrooge’s own past. It’s a vision of a Dr Frank N Stein, played by Terry Scott, who asked Scrooge for a loan which was refused. Because of that he hasn’t been able to finish the monster he’s creating as a mate for his existing female monster, played by Windsor, who he basically has to have sex with every 24 hours to ‘recharge’ her, and he’s getting sick of it. For some reason, he has Dracula – played by Butterworth – as a henchman, who after some penis gags helps him finish the male monster which then turns its amorous attentions not to Windsor, but to the doctor himself.

 

Present:
Windsor is back in this section, as a giggly, frolicking version of the Ghost of Christmas Present which, if she resembles any other version, probably vaguely puts you in mind of the one from Scrooged. However, she doesn’t really have much to do here other than vaguely wave her hand at the wall to bring up a vision of a sketch thinly linked into the narrative by saying it’s someone Scrooge has also refused to loan money to. It sees Frankie Howerd and Hattie Jacques playing lover poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, unable to run away together because Browning hasn’t been able to get the loan from Scrooge. In quite a change to established history, Browning ends up being shot dead by Barrett’s father.

 

Yet to Come:
Another radical reinterpretation of the spirit here, as Bresslaw plays the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as a caricature of a stereotypical late 1960s hippy complete with ‘groovy’ dialogue. He again has only one vision to show Scrooge, which for some reason consists of a sketch based on Cinderella – although this does fit with the tone of the whole production, which borrows a lot from the Christmas pantomime traditions. Indeed, in some listings at the time it was explicitly billed as being a pantomime. Windsor here is Cinders, Butterworth and Scott are the Ugly Sisters, Hawtrey is Buttons – although dressed for Aladdin – and Howerd is the Fairy Godmother.

 

What’s To-Day:
There is no real redemption of any kind, and only a brief ending scene at all – Scrooge wakes up, tries to give a woman in the street played by Jacques some money, is accused of trying to pay her for sexual services, and is apprehended by a police officer played by Bresslaw for having done so.

 

Review:
It had been many years since I’d last watched anything Carry On-related; probably even not since I was a child, when the films still turned up on mainstream television fairly regularly and I did used to enjoy them. I think the Carry Ons always had a big appeal to children in their afterlife on television, as the general silliness and sometimes slapstick nature of the comedy could obviously appeal to the young.
 
But as I say, it’s not something I had deliberately sought out for a long time, and as such it can come as a bit of a shock to the system if you’re not used to it; especially with an example like Carry On Christmas which is, I suspect, very far from being the team’s finest hour. While there are a few good jokes here and there – my favourite was Bresslaw as Bob Cratchit addressing his prayer for help to “dear Sir or Madam” – there’s no getting away from the fact that a lot of the material is very thin. And, more than once, uses as a comedy cliffhanger the terrible, threatening idea that something might be a bit gay.
 
It's strange to see Carry On material on videotape rather than film, albeit I had to watch this on Amazon Prime which is incapable of displaying video material properly. The format of the production did lead to another of the best bits in the show, with Frankie Howerd criticising the rushed nature of one particular shot cutting away to Hattie Jacques in their scene together. It’s the kind of thing which comes across as an off-the-cuff comment from Howerd, but which I suspect was at the very least worked up in rehearsal or camera rehearsal, even if not scripted; that old Morecambe & Wise thing of the moments which looked ad libbed having all been very carefully worked out in advance.

 

Howerd is by far the best thing here, I’d say, nicely undercutting the whole show, and generally doing his regular act of addressing the audience – both at home and in the studio – and making sure we know that he knows, or at least the characterisation he’s putting on knows, what a load of rubbish this all is.
 
Carol-wise, it’s definitely a disappointment. You can imagine the Carry On team having done a decent stab at a full version of A Christmas Carol as a film, but here it’s just an excuse to string together some sketches which don’t actually have anything to do with the plot of the Carol at all. Scrooge doesn’t really get redeemed, and indeed all the way through actually seems to be pretty much enjoying his life as it is anyway.
 
In a nutshell:
Possibly worth a look as a curio if you’re interested in the history of British comedy or British television of this era, and particularly if you’re interested in the Carry On films; but even then probably not worth seeing more than once.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb
Carry On wiki
CarryOn.org.uk