Mickey's Christmas Carol

Title:

Mickey’s Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Animated short film
 
Country:
USA
 
Production company:
Walt Disney Pictures
 
Year:
1983
 
Length:
26 minutes
 
Setting:
Fantasy Victorian

Background:
By the 1980s the idea of making short animated features for theatrical release had almost entirely disappeared. Even cartoon feature films were not at their height at this period, a few years away from the Disney Renaissance and then the rise of CGI with the likes of Toy Story in the 1980s.
 
Short cartoons at this point were almost entirely made for television broadcast, and although Mickey’s Christmas Carol did go out on television in the USA the following year, for its 1983 release it was made for the cinema. Presumably it was designed as an extra incentive to drive audiences to the re-releases of some existing Disney films – it was paired with a re-release of The Jungle Book in the UK in October, and The Rescuers in the USA in December.
 
Mickey Mouse is, of course, one of the most famous animated characters ever to have been created, the iconic emblem of Disney itself. This, however, was the first time in thirty years that a cartoon starring the character had been produced for the cinema. It was adapted from an audio version of the story which Disneyland Records had put out in 1974, and was a critical success – Mickey’s Christmas Carol was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1984.

Cast and crew:
There is only one original voice of a Disney character present in the line-up – Clarence Nash as Donald Duck, the final time he would voice the character. There is, however, also a first here – Alan Young as the voice of Scrooge McDuck, who it will surprise nobody to know takes the role of Ebenezer in this version. He would go on to voice McDuck for many years, most notably in the successful DuckTales series.
 
Burny Mattinson both produced and directed the short. He’d started work at Disney as an eighteen-year-old in the mail room in 1953, and worked his way up to become an animator and storyboarder. He would later get to direct a full-blown feature for Disney with The Great Mouse Detective in 1986, and helped to write several of their hugely successful 1990s classics.
 
He also collaborated on the story here, along with voice artist Young, actor and writer Alan Dinehart, writer Tony Marino, and animators Ed Gombert and Don Griffith.
 
Underdone Potato:
I was surprised to find that almost all of the characters are referred to by their actual character names from the book, rather than their Disney character names – an early indication of how surprisingly close to the source material this version runs.
 
Close to other versions at times, too, with Scrooge having a gag here about Cratchit having had a lump of coal the previous week which was also present in the Loony Tunes version of just a few years beforehand.

 
Donald Duck turns up in the role of Nephew Fred, relentlessly cheerful even when sent packing by Scrooge. Two characters I didn’t recognise but are apparently Disney versions of Ratty and Moley from The Wind in the Willows play the charitable gentlemen, who get equally short shrift from Scrooge, and there’s a version of the usual “you’ll want the whole day tomorrow,” exchange with Cratchit.
 
The one piece of ‘casting’ I didn’t feel really worked was Goofy as Jacob Marley – he just seems too stupid for this Scrooge to have wanted to have anything to do with. Perhaps he had inherited loads of money which Scrooge swindled him out of? Who knows, but there is a nice bit of animation in this sequence, as Marley’s shadow follows Scrooge up the stairs once he arrives home.
 
Past:
The Ghost of Christmas Past comes in the form of Jiminy Cricket of Pinocchio fame. There’s nothing of Scrooge’s schooldays; instead, we go straight to his time as an apprentice with ‘Fezzywig’.

As is probably even usual, Belle is at the party – although oddly, more formally known as ‘Isabelle’ in this version, and played by Daisy Duck. He see her and Scrooge dancing, but a very specific ten years later it all comes to an end as he repossesses the ‘Honeymoon cottage’ she’s been waiting for him with because her last payment was an hour late!
 
Present:
‘Willie the Giant’ – no, no idea – plays the Ghost of Christmas Present, and there’s some fun material of him being so big that he opens up the roofs of houses as if they were toys; Scrooge’s to climb out of, and others to look into.

 

As with other versions starring anthropomorphic animals, there are moral questions ignored by the presence of the likes of roast turkey and suckling pig among the Christmas goodies laid out on the ghost’s table when Scrooge first meets him.
 
Rather less of a Christmas feast is to be had at the Cratchits, the one scene the Spirit shows Scrooge – with a mute Minnie Mouse playing Mrs Cratchit, and two other Cratchit children in addition to Tiny Tim, who does get the ominous ‘I see a vacant seat…’ line hanging over him.
 
Yet to Come:
I didn’t recognise the cigar-smoking stock villain who plays the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but evidently he is called Pete and is a regular adversary used across many Disney cartoons. The cigar-smoking is relevant as there’s quite a nice touch where the mist which accompanies him on his arrival is revealed to be the smoke from his cigar.

Again this is quite a brief segment, which Scrooge showing the Cratchits mourning the death of Tim. As happens in one or two other versions, they are mourning him not at home but at his gravestone – and we pan across to see that it’s in the same graveyard as that of Scrooge, who is cast down into it and evidently into the fires of hell, with a touch of the 1970 version perhaps.
 
What’s To-Day:
There’s no boy at the window for Scrooge to shout down to, but he does meet the two charitable gentlemen outside, and showers them with money. After meeting Fred in the street and assuring him he is going to come round for Christmas dinner, he goes and buys up a lot of toys and, in a change made in several versions, goes around to the Cratchits’ house. In a scene which the Muppet version would later so very similarly, he initially pretends to be cross with Cratchit, before revealing his transformation and all ends happily.

Review:
I was struggling to think whether or not I’d ever actually seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon before this, although I eventually remembered that we’d been shown Fantasia at primary school once, so that counts. Really, though, I think Mickey is far more famous as a corporate symbol than he is as an actual character – far more people can tell you what he looks like than can actually tell you anything about him.
 
It’s a bit unfair that he gets top – indeed, eponymous – billing here too, given that he’s at best a supporting character, too. Surprisingly hard to take seriously given his voice, as well. To my modern ears, it just sounds like someone doing a parodied impression of the way that Michael Jackson used to speak.

 
That aside, I enjoyed this a great deal more than I had expected to. It’s a surprisingly faithful retelling of the story – compressed, of course, but with many of the main moments represented, and certainly not shy of tackling the issues of death in the original which other more child-friendly versions often try and shy away from.
 
As you’d expect from Disney, too, the whole thing has a touch to class and polish to the production which lifts it way, way above dross like the 1997 and 2001 animated versions, for example. I’m sure if you’re more of a Disney fan than I am, you’ll also enjoy spotting all kinds of cameos and guest appearances along the way as well.
 
In a nutshell:
Surprisingly good – a nice little version of the story.
 
Links:
Wikipedia
IMDb

A Christmas Carol - 1982, television

Title:
A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
One-man performance with illustrations, on multi-camera studio video
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
1982 (first broadcast on BBC Two in the UK from December 21^st-24^th that year)
 
Length:
4 episodes, each of approximately 15 minutes
 
Setting:
Victorian
 
Background:
Done in the style of the famous children’s series Jackanory, with an actor doing a performed reading of a condensed version of the story, these four short episodes roughly correspond with the first four ‘staves’ of the original story – with the fifth and final ‘stave’ added into the fourth episode. The episodes were originally – and, as far as I can tell, only – transmitted on BBC Two in the UK at 3.40pm on consecutive afternoons in the run-up to Christmas, from the 21^st to the 24^th of December 1982.
 
Presumably, given its Jackanory style, it was designed as something to help keep the children entertained in the afternoons once the schools had broken up for Christmas, but it’s not an explicitly youth-orientated version of the story. Perhaps that’s why, despite it being made by an experienced Jackanory team, it didn’t go out under that programme’s umbrella – so that adults wouldn’t be dissuaded from watching it thinking it was purely kids’ stuff.
 
It’s perhaps fitting that the BBC made such a version, as their first ever television adaptation of the Carol had been a one-person telling, starring Bransby Williams – a well-known stage Scrooge – in 1936. Williams had again performed a one-man versions for BBC Television in 1952, the latter the earliest British TV version to exist, being film recorded and regularly repeated for several Christmases thereafter. Michael Horden also did a reading for the BBC, in three parts in 1963.
 

Cast and crew:
The Jackanory feel is very much confirmed by a look at the talent working on this behind-the-scenes. The adaptation was written by Janie Grace, who over the previous decade had written nearly 100 episodes of Jackanory – and had also directed for the series. Grace went on to have a stellar career as a producer and executive producer in British children’s television, becoming head of Nickelodeon in the UK in the mid-1990s and later head of Children’s ITV.
 
Director Christine Secombe had also been a Jackanory regular, as well as helming multiple episodes of a variety of hugely well-known and popular British children’s TV shows, such as Grange Hill, Play School and Jonny Briggs.
 
That this is a Jackanory without the branding is perhaps finally sealed by the presence of Angela Beeching as producer. She had been producing Jackanory since the early 1970s and would continue to do so until towards its end in the mid-1990s, overseeing many hundreds of editions of the programme.
 
The reader is actor Michael Bryant, who had form with BBC Two Christmas specials – ten years earlier, he had played the lead in Nigel Kneale’s famous Christmas ghost story for a modern era, The Stone Tape. He also had various supporting parts in famous films to his name, such as one of the Titanic’s officers in A Night to Remember, and Lenin in Nicholas and Alexandra. Bryant had also done several readings for Jackanory down the years, as well as for a 1980 series made by the Jackanory team called Spine Chillers, which broadcast telling of ghost stories aimed at older children.
 
As was common with Jackanory, Bryant’s reading is accompanied by specially-commissioned illustrations. These were done by Paul Birbeck, another regular contributor to Jackanory, who had also created the opening title sequence for the BBC’s famous 1980s Miss Marple series, and the backgrounds for the Glynis Barber Jane adaptations.

Underdone Potato:
Bryant doesn’t so much seem to represent Dickens as much as a generic Victorian gentleman and general omniscient narrator, although he does so from locations representing where Scrooge is at different parts of the story. This is most evident in this first episode, which opens in a set representing the offices of Scrooge and Marley, before moving into the street for the door-knocker scene, and finally into Scrooge’s rooms.
 
This is, fairly obviously, an abridged version of the story, but Grace’s script keeps almost all of the most famous and familiar elements – with perhaps one curious exception. She chooses not to include the “surplus population” line, which seems a strange decision given that it is perhaps one of the most famous in the whole story. Perhaps she simply thought that it was too grim for younger viewers, although this seems unlikely given that equally grim elements are kept.
 
Birbeck’s illustrations are also good at representing little nooks and crannies of the narrative – so, for example, over the passage relating people’s reactions to Scrooge in the street, such as blind men’s dogs pulling their owners away from him, we see an example of his in the particular illustration for that sequence.
 
There are some nice moments where Birbeck’s illustrations aren’t always full-frame, and are mixed in with Bryant – for example, when Marley appears to Scrooge, and we have the ghost on one side of the screen and Bryant on the other.

Past:
Given that Bryant is reading Dickens’s description of the Ghost of Christmas Past from the book, with its strange old-young appearance, Birbeck has a bit of a job on his hands to attempt to realise that, but he does a pretty good job, I think.

 

There’s only one set for this episode, Bryant remaining on the Scrooge’s rooms set as he does for both this and the third episode. We get all the main points of these visions – the school, the Fezziwigs’ party, and both Belle scenes.

Mr Fezziwig's fiddler!

Present:
The Ghost of Christmas Present is rendered by Birbeck not just as big and cheerful, but with a hell of a belly on him, too. We have the scene of he and Scrooge out and about in the streets – including the part about people having to take their Christmas meat to be cooked at the baker, which is usually forgotten – and the main visits to the Cratchits’ and to Fred’s house, although the latter is rather cut down in favour of the former.

Tiny Tim, it must be said, does actually look somewhat less-than-tiny in the illustration of him being carried into he house on his father’s shoulders. But Birbeck more than makes up for that with a suitably haunted-looking depiction of Ignorance and Want beneath the Spirit’s robes
 
Yet to Come:
There’s a bit more adjustment in where Bryant reads from here, as we have a graveyard set for much of Scrooge’s encounter with the Spirit. Again, there are all the usual visions of the future, with the Cratchits mourning Tiny Tim being cut down rather. Although I do have to admit, I’m not entirely sure it does that scene any harm, and Grace does retain that section’s best line, about remembering the first parting among them.

 
What’s To-Day:
This is all part of the same fourth and final episode as the Yet to Come section, and for the finale Bryant is back in the set for Scrooge’s rooms, but made to seem much brighter and more cheerful by the change to daylight coming through the windows. Plus a Christmas tree, which Bryant lights some candles on at the end.
 
Speaking of candles, in Birbeck’s illustration of Bob’s surprise when Scrooge springs his surprise upon him on Boxing Day shows a candle being upset from the clerk’s table. I hope it didn’t then go on to burn the building down and put a rather sour end on things! (Luckily, there is no sign of such a thing. This isn’t the 2019 TV version, after all!)

Review:
I don’t remember always watching Jackanory when I was a child, but I certainly did sometimes, and there are some of its late 80s and early 90s readings which stuck in my young mind – Rik Mayall doing George’s Marvellous Medicine and Sylvester McCoy doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in particular.
 
I can well imagine this version of the Carol being a fond memory for many children who watched it in Christmas week of 1982. While it’s obviously just a performed reading rather than a full-on adaptation, such things can work very well when done with effort and care – as this is. Bryant is an engaging narrator with a rich and warm voice and a perfect tone for telling the story. It’s also been very sensitively adapted, and would be an excellent introduction to the book – as I expect it was for many younger viewers.
 
Birbeck’s illustrations are also, apart from the above-mentioned not-so-Tiny Tim, excellent. He isn’t tempted to try and ape John Leech’s style, and gives it a distinctive look and feel of his own.
 
In a nutshell:
A reading rather than a dramatisation, so not to everyone’s tase. But if you don’t mind that, this is a fine little retelling of the tale, in the best Jackanory tradition.
 
Links:
BBC Genome (episode 1)
British Film Institute

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

A Christmas Carol - 1982, television

Title:

A Christmas Carol

Format:

Animated television special

Country:

Australia

Production company:

Burbank Films

Year:

1982

Length:

69 minutes

Setting:

Victorian England

Background:

This was an early production from the Sydney-based Burbank Films – indeed, some sources list it as their very first production, as they’d been founded the year this was made. It was one of a series of Dickens adaptations the company made for the Australian television channel the Nine Network, and coming after the 1969 version must make Australia perhaps the only country other than Britain or the United States to have produced two animated versions of the tale. Or indeed two or more versions full stop.

Sources vary on when this was first broadcast on the Nine Network – both December 15^th and 22^nd 1982 are quoted in different places online.

Cast and crew:

The star of the 1969 version, Ron Haddrick, returns to the role here, suggesting that he was either perhaps particularly associated with the role in Australia, or the makers couldn’t think of anybody else for the part. Other voices of note in the cast include Robin Stewart, who’d played Syd James’s son in the UK sitcom Bless This House before subsequently relocating to Australia, and Barbara Frawley, who had several animated credits to her name and would provide voices in other Dickens adaptations for Burbank. Perhaps most notable of all among the voice cast, however, is Anne Haddy – later to become famous as Helen Daniels in Neighbours.

Alexander Buzo was primarily a playwright whose works had at times created controversy; quite a serious choice for a children’s adaptation of the Carol. Oddly, no director is credited on-screen – Wikipedia gives the credit to Jean Tych, but in the actual credits on the film she comes up under ‘character design’. Perhaps there’s a story there to be looked into…

Underdone Potato:

There’s quite a strange beginning to this one, wherein we see a child or young teenager – hard to tell quite how old they’re supposed to be – stealing a loaf of bread from a bakery because they’re hungry. They then bump into Scrooge, who presumably due to some sort of extrasensory powers shakes them, the stolen bread falls out from beneath their coat, and… Nothing. They run off, and Scrooge just sort of glowers without doing anything. Presumably designed to show how desperate the young person is, but as there’s no readily identifiable reaction from Scrooge either to have them arrested or anything like that, it doesn’t really tell us much.

Things then proceed much as usual, although with various differences to most versions. Instead of the sections in Scrooge’s office all coming at once, Fred and the charitable gentlemen visit in the morning, when an appreciable gap of time until the evening when he asks Cratchit wanting the whole day off tomorrow. There are some extra bits of business around Fred putting a wreath on the door – much to Scrooge’s displeasure – and Cratchit coughing when the gentlemen suggest that Marley’s generosity might be well represented in his surviving partner. When Bob does finally get to leave the office, we get him sliding on the ice as in the book, but it’s not a flat patch. Instead, it’s an ice slide which looks positively lethal.

Back at Scrooge’s set of rooms, which do look suitably drab and dreary, it’s a handbell which starts ringing rather than any bell on a pull, which is also something the 1959 television version did. Marley himself is less striking and more human-looking than his counterpart in the 1969 Australian version, and indeed becomes very human-looking indeed when we see a rare flashback to him in life. We also see Marley die – seemingly quite out of his blue sitting at his desk.

Marley’s ghost throws something of a hissy fit before he leaves, throwing a wooden chair onto the fire. When he does go, after Scrooge follows to the window and we get the bit not many versions do of the old miser seeing other spirits powerless to help the living.

Careful Bob! That thing looks lethal!

Past:

The Ghost of Christmas Past is a barely-dressed young blond man, wearing some sort of Greek toga-type micro dress. I bet he caught a chill going out and about with Scrooge to these cold old Christmases! He’s also quite sharp and combative with Scrooge verbally, with not much in the way of sympathy on display.

At the school scenes we get another bit not often done, the discussion of Scrooge’s enthusiasm for the childhood stories of his youth; Ali Barbar gets a mention, as in the book, here appearing to Scrooge out of the window in his imagination. Fan comes to get him as usual, and then we’re off to the Fezziwigs’ Christmas party, which is a bit drab and uninspiring and sparsely-attended in this version – just Ebenezer, Dick, the Fezziwigs and their two daughters, and the fiddler.

True to the book but again unusually for an adaptation there’s no Belle at the party, and we also get both of the Belle scenes. This means there’s something of a continuity problem when we hear Belle’s husband tell her that Scrooge’s partner is dying, given that we saw him die quite suddenly in the flashback earlier. We can only assume perhaps that on this particular occasion Marley recovered and the died later, the same wiggle room that Tony Jordan just about gets away with in Dickensian.

There is a fun touch of Scrooge describing Belle’s children as “brats”, then remembering that the spirit is there with him and putting on a show of saying what lovely children they are!

Put some bloody trousers on would you mate?

Present:

The Ghost of Christmas Present is very much closer to the Father Christmas look than usual here, with a red robe and a long white beard. Having that colour beard means he doesn’t visibly age at the end of the section, but instead starts to fade in an out a bit. Scrooge mentions what he experienced “last night,” a reminder that originally the visitations were supposed to be happening on successive evenings, something usually edited out of Marley’s warnings and which even Dickens seems to have realised was a bad idea as they all needed to be over and done with by Christmas morning.

The spirit’s torch only appears in his hand when he needs it to drop Christmas cheer – seemingly instead of making a meal seem grander, actually increasing the sizes of people’s turkeys so they are more grand. We spend quite a bit of time outside a bakery, info-dumping about why the poor needed to take their birds there to be cooked and using the spirit’s festive cheer to stop an argument, before heading off to the Cratchits’.

Tiny Tim here seems much younger than he’s usually depicted, only just being into full walking and talking age, perhaps. There’s the usual toast to Scrooge and Mrs Cratchit’s less-than-thrilled reaction to it, before we get another bit not usually included – the trip to the lighthouse. We drop in on Fred’s Christmas lunch, which like the Fezziwigs’ party earlier seems a much smaller and quieter affair than usual, before we finish up with the spirit showing Scrooge Ignorance and Want, and giving his grave warning about them.

Yet to Come:

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a traditional version, floating along in a hood with only darkness beneath it. Something about the hood and the way in which it floats along does bring to mind Orko from the Masters of the Universe cartoons, though.

In a move which it’s perhaps surprising isn’t done more often, the gentlemen discussing Scrooge’s death are the chartable gentlemen from the beginning. There’s an odd bit at the inn where Scrooge is shown someone else sitting in the place where he usually sits for lunch, before we’re with Old Joe for an almost entirely faithful recreation of almost all of that scene.

We see the Cratchits grieving for Tim, and then an example of someone else living a better life than Scrooge by actually giving some money to the charitable gentlemen. We finish up at Scrooge’s grave, where he clings to the spirit begging to be told these events can be changed, before he wakes up clinging to the bedpost.

What’s To-Day:

The boy outside Scrooge’s window is promised half a crown straight off to run to the butcher, rather than told he can have it if he’s back in five minutes. The whole section is quite brief, really, but then again it is in the book as well.

Scrooge goes to Fred’s for lunch where he is warmly received, and even has a go at singing a bit of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Not very well, admittedly. We don’t see anything of the Cratchits on Christmas Day, but we do get Scrooge pulling his little joke on Bob the following morning, before revealing all is well and the end credits roll.

Review:

It’s hard to decide quite what to make of this version overall. It certainly includes a lot more of the book than many other adaptations do, but in other respects it frequently isn’t as true to the story as it might be. All the way through, a lot of the best-known and most memorable lines from the book are delivered as rough approximations or simplifications of the original dialogue. Of course this will always be necessary to some degree, but never as much as it is here – it’s as if they perhaps panicked a little about what their audience in 1982 might understand or be prepared to put up with.

You might think this would only irk a purist and not matter to most people. Perhaps, but unfortunately, I think it means that a lot of the dialogue isn’t as good nor as sharp as it could and should be. Some of their invented bits of business also feel strange or just don’t work. Scrooge throws a bit of coal on the fire near the beginning, for example; I get that perhaps they were trying to show how mean he was by only putting a small lump of coal on, but the fact that he did it at all makes him seem less of a miser than he ought to at this point.

There’s also the same problem faced by the 1969 version, in that while Haddrick is quite spirited in the role, he’s no much good at an English accent and Scrooge sounds Australian. Indeed, the problem is more prominent here as unlike the 1969 version several of the other characters also have Australian accents, perhaps most notably Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Past.

But for all that, I’m not saying that I hated this version, or that it’s an awful one. In terms of incident and content it’s very faithful to the book, far more so than many others, and it’s certainly a cut above the likes of the 1997 and 2001 animated adaptations. I just wish perhaps they’d had more confidence in the abilities of the original author and his dialogue; he is Charles Dickens, after all!

In a nutshell:

By no means bad, and would certainly work as an introduction to the story for children, I think. But also not up there with the very best versions.

Links:

Wikipedia

IMDb

The Jetsons - "A Jetson Christmas Carol"

Title:

A Jetson Christmas Carol

Format:

Animated TV series episode

Country:

USA

Production company:

Hanna-Barbera

Year:

1985 (first aired in syndication in the USA on December 13^th that year)

Length:

22 minutes

Setting:

Fantasy sci-fi future

Background:

The Jetsons had first aired on the CBS network in the United States in the 1960s, as a futuristic counterpart to the hugely successful Flintstones, another prime-time animated sitcom. Unlike The Flintstones’ version of the Carol which was later made as a special in the 1990s, this was a regular series episode of The Jetsons, although not from the original 1960s run – this was part of a second season made in the 1980s and sold in syndication (so directly from Hanna-Barbera to individual private TV stations) rather than airing on a network.

Cast and crew:

Also unlike The Flintstones version, even though the second season of The Jetsons was made twenty-odd years after the first, this still features all of the main voice cast from the original version. George O’Hanlon plays George, PennySingleton is Jane, Janet Waldo is Judy and Daws Butler plays Elroy, the four members of the Jetson family. Voiceover legend Mel Blanc is the star of this particular episode, however, as George’s boss Cosmo Spacely, a regular character from the series who fills the Scrooge role here.

Barbara Levy and Marc Paykuss wrote the episode – beyond other work on the 1980s version of The Jetsons, other credits for them seem to be non-existent. It’s possible of course that they were some sort of in-house Hanna-Barbera pseudonyms for other writers. There are no fewer than five directors credited, which seems rather extreme for one 22-minute production, but perhaps that’s the nature of having to churn out so many episodes of an animated series.

Lazy buggers, these Jetsons!

Underdone Potato:

There isn’t actually a huge amount of the Carol in this, although probably just enough to count. We’re 11 minutes into the 22-minutes episode before we get to the Dickens-inspired section, with the first half being taken up with a depiction of the Jetsons’ preparations for Christmas. All of this culminates in their dog, Astro – who talks, after a fashion, much in the manner of Scooby-Doo – opening his present early, finding it’s a robot cat, chasing it to destruction and becoming gravely ill when he swallows one of the sprockets which comes flying out of the wreckage.

This is important later, trust me.

Having not watched The Jetsons for many a long year, I had forgotten just how completely and utterly lazy they are. Possibly the laziest television characters this side of Lieutenant Green on Captain Scarlet, who had that moving chair he would move about three feet to the left whenever Colonel White wanted to talk to him.

Anyway, these lazy buggers go even beyond that, having devices at the dinner table which literally spoon-feed them, as well as a moving walkway just to go through their own living room. Which I know is all probably supposed to be a parody of either the laziness of modern generations or of sci-fi gimmicks, but still…

Poor old George has to work late on Christmas Eve to fulfil an order for his boss Mr Spacely, who he remarks is a real Scrooge. After George finally gets home to fret over the seemingly-dying Astro with the rest of his family, we see Spacely back at the office enjoying his massive piles of money. This is when the Carol element finally kicks off, as his former business partner ‘Marsley’ pops up and warns him of the terrible fate he may share. Marsley is swathed in bandages rather than the traditional chains, however, looking more like someone going to a Halloween party as a Mummy than a tormented soul, and Spacely dismisses the whole thing as a bad dream.

George gets orders to work late on Christmas Eve.

Past:

The Ghost of Christmas Past then appears, in the form of a giant, floating robot head. It shows Spacely his childhood playground, where oddly he’s a young contemporary of George Jetson – given that he’s the boss, I had assumed that Spacey was supposed to be rather older than George. We see him getting a lot of money from George’s hard work, before we flit forward to a ‘fly-in’ cinema, where teenageSpacely is watching The Flintstones with his future wife, Starla. In a diversion from the usual course of the traditional Belle scene, Starla is worried about his obsession with money, but in the end seems prepared to go along with it!

Present:

The Ghost of Christmas Present is… a giant, talking present, with a lid which hinges open on the front and a pair of hands inside which reach in and grab Spacely, and transport him around inside the gift. Which is a decent gag, I suppose!

This section is even shorter than the others, as all Spacely is shown is the Jetsons gathered around the dying Astro. “I’m bored of this corny yuletide soap opera,” Spacely complains, which puts them on rather dodgy ground!

The Ghost of Christmas Present. In more ways than one, it seems!

Yet to Come:

The spirit here is depicted as a large, imposing bank of computer equipment, which doesn’t speak but does bleep menacingly at Spacely. Again we’re just shown one scene, of the Jetsons of the future – although clearly not all that far into the future, as none of them has visibly aged – living in a fabulous mansion and being stupendously rich. It turns out that the sprocket which killed Astro was a Spacely sprocket, and they were able to sue Spacely for an enormous sum, ruining him.

What’s To-Day:

Having learned that he’ll end up ruined, Spacely rushes to the Jetsons’ on Christmas Day, having dragged his “own personal vet” who he just happens to have handy away from his Christmas dinner to treat Astro. The dog is saved, and Spacely also loads them up on presents, including a guitar for Elroy – who remarks “you must be psychic,” as indeed he must be as Spacely wasn’t shown the scene of Elroy wanting it which the audience were earlier – and daughter Judie gets some “nuclear roller skates,” which sounds pretty hazardous.

I was expecting some sort of punchline or pay-off pointing out that Spacely isn’t a reformed character at all, and clearly only did all of this so that they won’t sue him, but none came. It’s an odd version of the Carol where our ‘heroes’ lose out on riches because the Scrooge figure ensures they don’t get it, but I suppose one of the messages of the original is that there’s more to life than money, and at least their dog survived this time.

Review:

A curious version of the Carol, which at 22 minutes probably just about stays on the right side of outstaying its welcome. It does manage to pack a fair bit into those 22 minutes, although labelling it as ‘A Jetson Christmas Carol’ is probably a bit rich when that element of it only takes up about half of the running time.

There’s some pretty weird scripting at times, mainly all of Jane Jetson’s lines when Astro first falls ill, and George’s rather cheery “I’d have more fun in a torture chamber!” when he sets off to work at the beginning of the episode, which makes him sound as if he is having serious psychological problems with his job.

But the ghosts are all nicely done, and if you’re a fan of The Jetsons and like the Carol I would imagine you’d enjoy this.

In a nutshell:

Probably more one for fans of The Jetsons or at least people who are familiar with it in some way, and not especially worth seeking out otherwise.

Links:

IMDb

Highway to Heaven - "Another Song For Christmas"

Title:

Another Song for Christmas

Format:

Single-camera filmed television drama episode

Country:

USA

Production company:

Michael Landon Productions, for NBC

Year:

1984 (first broadcast on NBC in the USA on December 19^th that year)

Length:

48 minutes

Setting:

Contemporary United States

Background:

This is one of several retellings of the Carol down the years which have been done as episodes of existing ongoing series, in this case from the American drama Highway to Heaven. Highway to Heaven was an example of the ‘wandering stranger helps those in need’ genre, along with the likes of The Fugitive, The Littlest Hobo and Quantum Leap, the latter of which also did a Carol episode which we will come to in due course.

In Highway to Heaven’s case, this was the 13^th episode of the first season. The premise of the show saw relegated angel Jonathan and his human friend Mark travelling around America helping these needy cases. I’m not sure it’s a show which ever gained much traction here in the UK, although I do remember repeats of it turning up on the ITV network here when I was a child in the early-to-mid 1990s. It was certainly popular in its country of origin, however.

Cast and crew:

Regular Highway to Heaven stars Michael Landon and Victor French are present and correct as their characters Jonathan and Mark. Landon had been a big star on American television since the late 1950s, appearing in the hit western Bonanza and then on Little House on the Prairie, both of which also gained success in the UK and elsewhere. Highway to Heaven was made by his own production company.

The episode was written by Dan Gordon, who was one of the main writers of the show throughout its run and also directed three instalments. This one, however, was directed by Michael Landon himself. Various intriguing claims are made about Gordon’s life and career online, none of which I am quite sure how much to believe – it is interesting, however, that he seems to have got the main writer gig on Highway to Heaven without having much previous television writing on his CV.

Jonathan and Eddy look back on Eddy's childhood.

Underdone Potato:

The episode revolves around Edward “Honest Eddy” Barton, a millionaire used-car salesman, played by the episode’s main guest star, Geoffrey Lewis. In an extremely unsubtle series of encounters in the first section of the episode, we see him con an old couple into buying a dodgy car, fire his honest new mechanic Ratchet (see what they did there?) for refusing to alter the milometers on some of the cars, and refuse to give a donation to the upkeep of a local orphanage. Then, just for good measure, when he gets home he refuses to give his butler Joseph tomorrow off for Christmas Day, with a little echo in their dialogue of the conversation between Scrooge and Cratchit about having the day off. Except poor old Joseph, unlike Bob, doesn’t get it.

Having been quickly chased off Eddy’s car lot for pointing out the sorry state and fraudulent mileage of one of the cars or sale there, Jonathan stops Ratchet from robbing a toy shop to get toys for his children, and he and Mark set up for the night in a motel room. After having bumped into Jonathan’s old friend ‘Chris Cringle’ along the way. Of course.

Mark falls asleep reading a copy of A Christmas Carol, taking us into the ghostly visitations section without any Marley equivalent or any warning to Eddy of what’s to come.

Special guest star!

Past:

Jonathan is first up on ghost duty, standing in for Christmas Past, which he shows Eddy by having him open his bedroom door and discover a scene of a childhood Christmas in the 1940s at his grandmother’s house in Arkansas. While it is nice that Eddy, while moved, isn’t immediately won over by this – dismissing his friendly neighbours at the time as “hayseed suckers” – in common with much of the rest of the episode it’s very treacly, and the actor playing young Eddy is very poor. His “I love you” exchange with Eddy’s grandmother isn’t so much endearing as it is downright creepy.

Present:

This is the first time I have ever sat down and watched an episode of Highway to Heaven, so I’m not really sure of how the format usually works, but I was surprised when Jonathan’s human friend Mark appeared to be given some of Jonathan’s angelic powers here, deputising for the Ghost of Christmas Present. Well, he does have a beard I suppose.

Eddy is taken to the orphanage that it turns out he isn’t only just refusing to donate to, but actually owns the land is stands on and is having them evicted on Christmas Day. The internal consistency of this seems rather all-over-the-place, even just within this one scene – Eddy’s lawyer has come to deliver the eviction notice, and goes from hard-hearted cynic saying that Christmas is just another working day to him, to saying he’ll stall the paperwork while Millard the orphanage boss goes to speak to Eddy.

This is still better, however, than the dreadful scene at the Ratchets’ home which follows, with more unconvincing child actors being forced to deliver some truly atrocious dialogue.

Well, he's got the beard for it...

Yet to Come:

We’re back to Jonathan on ghostly duties here, and in common with several versions of the story – mostly ones from the black-and-white era – the only vision Eddy is shown is that of his grave, although it is at least established that he’s going to die relatively soon, with the date on the gravestone being December 23^rd 1986. There’s an interesting bit before he looks at the stone with a couple of gravediggers doing a sort of Hamlet bit talking about him, before the visions come to an end and he’s deposited back in his bedroom.

What’s To-Day:

In contrast to some versions where Scrooge’s conversion seems to be complete too soon, here it doesn’t really feel soon enough – there’s an odd change of gear with Eddy waking up as a completely new man, kind and generous. He gives Joseph the morning off, gives the couple of conned his own car, writes a $500,000 cheque for the orphanage, and not only gives Ratchet his job back but takes his children a shedload of toys and promises his son Bobby – Bobby Ratcher, ya see? – that he’ll pay for an operation to make him well again. In fact, it all feels so forced that you could suspect he’s deliberately putting it on and overplaying it to convince Jonathan and Mark he’s reformed until they bugger off and he can safely go back to his normal life, but sadly it’s not that kind of series.

Mark had also woken up in bed, still with that copy of A Christmas Carol, having apparently dreamed the whole thing – rather suggesting that Jonathan had somehow used his consciousness in the visions he produced for Eddy while his friend was asleep. Without his prior permission. Which doesn’t really feel on, the angelic git.

"Can I play with you?"

Review:

I do appreciate that it’s unfair to judge a single episode of a series I haven’t seen anything else of – bar the end titles being on before something else I wanted to watch when I was a child – this is a pretty poor version of the Carol. It’s all done in extremely broad strokes with the emotion laid on an inch thick, something you always have to be careful of with this story because if you don’t do it well, it can very much come across as far too saccharine.

That isn’t the only problem here, however. Much of the dialogue is atrocious, and often extremely poor delivered. The whole exchange near the end when Eddy tells young Bobby that he wants them to “play together” is just sinister rather than endearing, and I don’t think that’s purely saying it through modern eyes. Given that Landon was the director as well as star of this, and that it was made by his production company, it does have something of the feel of a vanity project about it, and it could have done with someone else putting in another layer of editorial control – at the scripting stage, if nothing else.

In a nutshell:

I would be surprised if this were considered by fans of the show to be one of the higher-end episodes of Highway to Heaven – I’m sure there are much better examples. Poor.

Links:

IMDb