The Lost Carols - A Christmas Carol, 1950, television

Title:
A Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Live television drama
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
1950 – broadcast twice, both as live performances by the same cast; first at 9pm on Christmas Day, and then again in the For the Children slot at 5pm on Wednesday the 27^th.
 
Length:
Approximately 90 minutes. That was the scheduled slot, although live dramas could occasionally over- or underrun – but the evidence suggests this ran pretty much to time, as there’s no mention of anything to the contrary in the BBC’s audience research report.
 
Setting:
Victorian
 
Background:
For the second time, Bransby Williams was due to bring to the television screen his performance as Scrooge, which had become well-known on stage throughout much of the 20^th century to this point. And unlike his scheduled one-man performance from 1936, this time it did actually happen – but sadly, once again we are unable to see it now.
 
That one wasn’t really a ‘Lost Carol’ as it never actually happened in the first place, and it could also be argued that this one isn’t strictly-speaking ‘lost’ either. It never ‘existed’ to be lost at all, in a recorded sense, any more than a stage play does. It was performed live, twice, and on neither occasion was any effort made to preserve it for posterity. It simply went out into the ether, seen only by those in Britain who had television sets switched-on at the time, and was then gone forever.
 
And yes, it would have been seen by anybody who had a television set switched on – because at this point the BBC was still the only British television broadcaster. Their single channel was now being beamed out from two transmitters, at Alexandra Palace serving London and the surrounding area, and at Sutton Coldfield serving the English Midlands.
 
There were, however, now hundreds of thousands of television viewers, with the number increasing all the time. Television was still a way from being a mass medium at this point, but nor was it any longer the luxury of a tiny few.
 
The live performance, pretty much universal for all British television drama of the time, meant that, yes, the entire cast and crew were there on Christmas Day. It was also common for there to be a second performance, in this case just two days later, put out this time in the 5pm children’s slot so that younger viewers who had not had the chance to watch it first time around would be able to see it.

Bransby Williams appearing on television in 1957

 

All, however, did not go entirely well for Williams in this second performance. Having been forced to cancel his planned 1936 television debut at Scrooge due to illness, the second performance of this full-cast version almost went the same way. On New Year’s Day, the Daily Herald reported how Williams had become ill early during the December 27 transmission, and that he was “in agony for one and a half hours before the cameras.”
 
“I had hardly given my first bellow of rage before I was gripped by the most awful abdominal pains,” he was quoted as having told the paper. “My training prevented the viewers – in Children’s Hour – from knowing anything was wrong. They just saw my face working more than usual. The play ran according to script.” The Herald further added that “the contortions of his face through pain made Scrooge’s rage all the more frightening,” and that Williams had “refused to abandon his part, because there was no understudy.”
 
Several of the newspaper previews and reviews of the production mention how it took up the use of two television studios, rather than simply being done in one as was more usual – although it was not unknown for big productions to be spread across a pair. The Birmingham Post, in a preview on December 14, claimed that “Bransby Williams, in the part of Scrooge, will be working on one set, while the rest of the cast will be performing elsewhere, and the two pictures will be superimposed to give a suitably ghostly effect.”
 
While this was true for certain scenes, it gives the impression that Williams was alone in one studio and the rest of the cast in the other, which was not the case. Only the scenes with the ghosts were done separately in this manner, and not necessarily always in different studios, so that the two could be cross-faded. However, it’s still impressive that Williams and his co-stars were able to play effectively without having one another nearby, whether they were in the same studio at the time or not.
 
“There are about fourteen scenes,” the Huddersfield Examiner reported on the 20^th. “And approximately half the performance will be superimposed to give a suitably ghostly effect.” Producer Eric Fawcett had commented on the difficulties this presented in a preview in the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. “We are trying to keep the ghosts as ghostly as possible,” he told the magazine, “even though this entails the actors playing scenes while standing yards apart. Two-studio production will necessitate such careful work on the part of the cameramen, sound and vision-mixers and engineers – to say nothing of those dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts, the studio staff.”
 
As to which studios these were, I have no hard evidence but I would say almost certainly the two original BBC Television studios, Studios A and B at Alexandra Palace in North London. The BBC had in 1950 begun using their newly-acquired facility at Lime Grove, a set of ex-film studios, with Studio D having launched at the children’s studio in May. Studio G had been opened for television with a variety spectacular on the Saturday before Christmas, but at this point drama production still seems to have been based at the Palace so it seems almost certain that A Christmas Carol came from there.

Alexandra Palace in 1946, with the transmitter mast above the BBC-occupied wing

Cast and Crew:
I wrote about Bransby Williams’s background playing Scrooge in my piece on the abandoned 1936 production, so there’s little need to repeat that here. It is worth saying, however, that at the age of 80 he must surely have been one of the earliest-born people ever to have starred in a television drama.
 
He did, however, have some level of assistance – The Stage the following month mentioned “Ewart Wheeler, who doubled so ingeniously for Bransby Williams in the recent televising of A Christmas Carol.” Wheeler is credited in the Radio Times simply for ‘other parts’, so you can imagine how he perhaps played Scrooge for certain shots seen only from behind, while Williams was prepared for a following shot or scene.
 
Among the rest of the cast, one name which leaps out to anyone familiar with the BBC’s 1950s television output is that of Patricia Fryer as ‘Fanny’ – Fryer would later play Margaret Appleyard, youngest of the Appleyard siblings in the BBC’s children’s soap opera-cum-sitcom The Appleyards, taking over the part for the second series in 1953 before outgrowing it herself in 1955, and returning for the one-off Christmas with The Appleyards in 1960. There is no Fan listed in the cast, so ‘Fanny’ is presumably a slightly-renamed version of Scrooge’s sister from the Christmas Past scenes, which Fryer would have been the right age for.
 
As is not exactly common but also not unique, the three performers playing the ghosts here double-up in other parts. Arthur Hambling as the Spirit of Christmas Past also appears as one of the stock exchange gentlemen discussing Scrooge’s death in the Yet-to-Come scenes; Julian d’Albie as the Ghost of Christmas Present – yes, they were billed as a mix of ‘Spirit’ and ‘Ghost’ – is also credited as a ‘portly gentleman’, and WE Holloway as the Spirit of Christmas to Come (no ‘yet’ in the billing) also portrays Marley.

 
Whether this was for effect or for economy is debateable, however it appears to have almost certainly been the former. ‘Young Scrooge’ actor John Bentley also has a credit as a night watchman appearing early on in the play, and similarly Old Joe actor Leonard Sharp appears as a crossing sweeper. Fryer too had a second role, credited as ‘Girl waif’ alongside Michael Edmonds as ‘Boy waif’ – from their placing in the order-of-appearance cast list, almost certainly these are Ignorance and Want from the end of the ‘Present’ section. This perhaps adds weight to the idea that the doubling-up was a deliberate effect, with some of the figures Scrooge encounters through the story having the faces of those who are familiar to him.
 
On the subject of familiar faces, several of the cast were old co-stars of Williams’ – he remarked to the Daily Herald after his illness during the second performance that “there was always one of my old pals – Jimmy d’Albie, Bill Holloway or Arthur Hambling – waiting to give me an arm. Once or twice they half carried me.” Kathleen Saintsbury, who played Mrs Cratchit, was also a friend and regular co-star from the stage, who would appear on Williams’s This is Your Life in 1958.
 

Kathleen Saintsbury appears on Bransby Williams' episode of This is Your Life in 1958

Perhaps one of the most notable names in the cast is Barbara Murray, as Belle – evidently not named here, as she’s only given as ‘fiancée’ in the cast list in the Radio Times. Murray was already a recognisable face from British films at this point, having co-starred in Passport to Pimlico the previous year, and would continue to be a notable screen presence in British cinema for some years to come. So it’s quite impressive that they were able to drag her away from her Christmas dinner to come and do this – although it is possible that her scene could perhaps have been a film insert, especially as Murray is not one of those who doubles up in another role. Such inserts were being used in television drama by this point, although only very sparingly and more often than not for outdoor and action sequences rather than dialogue scenes.

 
It was also the usual practice of BBC television drama at the time for there to be a single person credited as ‘producer’ who performed what might today be understood to be the functions of both producer and director – overseeing the production both administratively and creatively. This was the case here, with producer Eric Fawcett also having written the adaptation – although from an existing stage play version by Dominic Roche, rather than directly from the book. Fawcett had a long career with BBC Television, beginning as a producer on the pre-war service from Alexandra Palace in the 1930s and continuing right through until the 1970s as a drama director.
 
As a Doctor Who fan and someone with a great interest in the creation of that programme, I cannot resist noting the presence of James Bould as the designer. Thirteen years later, Bould would be the BBC’s Design Department Manager and one of those who was not keen about Doctor Who going ahead as he didn’t think his department had the time, manpower and resources to provide for its needs. He was presumably having a happier time here with a different story which went through the barriers of time.
 
Underdone Potato:
Without having had access to the script, it’s obviously very difficult to say anything much for certain about the specific elements of this version. However, with the cast listed in order of appearance in the Radio Times, we do know that Julian d’Albie, Leonard Sharp and John Bentley, later to appear as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Old Joe and Young Scrooge respectively, all appear early on, after only Williams as Scrooge, John Ruddock as Bob Cratchit and Robert Cawdron as Fred, so there seems to have been a deliberate level of foreshadowing there.
 
I have been able to read the BBC’s audience research report on the production, which notes how “There was praise… for the way the atmosphere of mid-Victorian London was suggested, especially in the opening scenes ‘which set the mood for the whole play’.”
 
Past:
The credits for Sean Lynch as ‘Boy Scrooge’ and John Bentley as ‘Young Scrooge’, as well as Patricia Fryer as ‘Fanny’ and Barbara Murray as ‘Fiancée’, indicate that we get the usual scenes of Scrooge as an unhappy schoolboy, and later breaking his engagement – or rather, having it broken.
 
There is, however, no credit for anyone playing Fezziwig, which suggests that the party scene was either omitted or scaled-down. There is a production credit for “Dances arranged by John Armstrong”, which would surely have been mostly likely to have been for a Fezziwig scene. Perhaps it was only briefly shown using extras.
 
Present:
Again, we can mostly only try and guess at what was shown from the cast list – but we certainly have the scene with the Cratchits, as there are credits for Mrs Cratchit, Martha, Peter, Tim and unnamed ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ Cratchits. Fred was already credited for his earlier appearance at Scrooge’s office, so it’s uncertain whether there was a scene at his Christmas lunch. I am inclined to think not, as there is a credit for ‘Ann Wriggs’ – seemingly an error, and meant to be Ann Wrigg without the ‘s’ – as ‘Mrs Fred’ but not until the very end – suggesting she is not seen until Scrooge visits after his redemption to go and make amends.

 
Yet to Come:
There are credits for the gentlemen who discuss Scrooge’s death, and for Joe and Mrs Dilber discussing the sale of his things, but with the Cratchits having been credited earlier it’s impossible to know whether their future scene was included here – but I suspect it probably was.
 
The unnamed reviewer, credited only as ‘Cathode’, in the Wokingham & Bracknell Times gives us an impression of how the Spirit was realised for this section, and they were not particularly impressed. Having praised the production generally, ‘Cathode’ felt that “the Ghost of Xmas Yet to Come looked too much like a member of the Ku-Klux-Klan.”
 
What’s To-Day:
Again, because most characters who would normally re-appear here have already been credited, it’s very difficult by this stage to be able to determine too many specifics without the script. However, we can say that there was Tony Lyons as ‘Boy with the goose’, and as mentioned above there does appear to have been a scene of Scrooge going to dine with his nephew as Mrs Fred is the final new character credited as appearing. We do know that Scrooge lifted up Tiny Tim at the end of the Christmas Day performance – because the Daily Herald noted Williams was unable to do so on the second performance due to his illness.

 

Review:
Obviously I cannot review the production myself as I have not seen it, and nor sadly will I ever be able to, and I have not currently been able to read a copy of the script. However, fortunately unlike for some lost versions of the Carol we can get at least some impression of what it was like, from contemporary reviews – both professional, and from ordinary viewers.
 
The BBC at the time did not yet compile viewing figure as such. They did, however, have a panel of several hundred families selected as being a representative cross-section of the audience, who recorded their reactions to the various programmes. From their responses, the BBC calculated that some 59% of television sets had been switched on for A Christmas Carol on Christmas Day, with 23% for the repeat in For the Children two days later.
 
The first performance had an average of 4.35 people watching per set in use, and the second performance 3.19. Both received very good ‘Reaction Index’ figures – the indication of how much those in the sample group who watched a programme had enjoyed it. The first performance had a score of 74, and the second 73. This was, as the audience research report noted, “well above the current average (63) for studio performances of plays.”
 
The report does also note, however, that “The audience for this programme, though large by normal standards, was by no means outstanding compared with others during the Xmas holiday period, large numbers of ‘guest viewers’ leading to high ‘viewers per sets-in-use’ figures for nearly all programmes.”

 
In terms of qualitative rather than quantitative feedback, it’s fascinating that the audience research report records an almost reverent attitude towards the Carol. Noting that 94% of the 272 who completed questionnaires related to the programme indicated that the story had already been familiar to them, the report suggests that “because this story now ranks as a Christmas tradition most viewers felt it to be beyond criticism.”
 
Not all, however. “A few admitted a slight feeling of aversion for its ‘outdated’ sentimentality and insistence on a moral ‘which now seems to have lost much of its original point’.” While there was “little comment on individual points,” some viewers felt that “the length of the novel made it a difficult subject for television and that some cutting, especially in the scenes depicting Scrooge’s earlier life, would have done no harm.” Which seems a strange thing to say given it’s quite a short book, and a 90-minute slot ought to enable it to be done fairly well.
 
Williams’s performance as Scrooge was “widely regarded as little short of perfect,” with some who had seen him play the part on stage in the past “delighted to find he could still play it ‘with all the old zest’.” John Ruddock as Cratchit, Thomas Moore as Tim and Robert Cawdron as Fred we also “singled out as especially memorable.”
 
The production techniques seem to have gone down well, also, with report stating that viewers “thought very well of the production and settings, particularly of the camera-work and sets in the spirit scenes. As several said, here the resources of television came into their own, enabling the viewer to see things which were quite impossible to manage on the stage.”
 
Among the professional reviewers, George Campey in the Evening Standard admitted that “the attention of some of my guests wandered during the first hour.” However, he himself “sat enthralled by the encounters between Scrooge (played with veteran knowledge by Bransby Williams) and the assorted spectres in a production which fully evoked the Dickensian spirit. This play must have been a producer’s nightmare. Eric Fawcett, at the helm, handled the tricks and the action with consummate skill.”
 
AE Jebbett in the Evening Despatch liked Williams’s “smooth melodrama” as Scrooge, but felt overall that the production was too long. Cyril Butcher in The Sketch’s round-up of Christmas viewing had no such qualms, praising Eric Fawcett for having “turned in one of the best jobs of work in his career. The story, with its ghosts and spirits, obviously lends itself to a full use of camera superimposition – a dangerous trick used by inexpert hands. But Mr Fawcett’s are just about as experienced as one will find. Nor did he, in this welter of technicalities, forget that he was dealing with a lovely and moving tale which needs most delicate handling. Thank you, Mr Fawcett.”
 
‘Cathode’ in the Wokingham & Bracknell Times “had that queer feeling that one gets when one visits an entirely strange place and feels ‘I have been here before.’ For everything in the play was just as I had imagined it. The brilliant Scrooge by that Grand Old Man of the stage, Bransby Williams, really made old Ebenezer live, and Dorothy Summers gave an excellent portrayal of Mrs Dilber.”
 
Apart from the aforementioned reservation about the costume of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the only criticism ‘Cathode’ made was that “the Ghost of Xmas Past was not nearly as awesome as it might have been.”
 
In a Nutshell:
An important milestone in the Carol’s television history, it’s a shame we can’t see this today – but that’s nobody’s fault, it’s simply the way things were. You may as well blame a stage play for ‘not existing’.
 
Links:
IMDb
Radio Times

Scrooge, or A Christmas Carol (Sarah) - 1990, television

 

Title:

Scrooge, or A Christmas Carol Sarah 

Format:
Multi-camera studio VT children’s comedy
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
1990 – transmitted on BBC One on December 29 that year
 
Length:
41 minutes
 
Setting:
Contemporary
 
Background:
Going Live! was the BBC’s live Saturday morning children’s television programme from 1987 to 1993, one of the best-known shows from a tradition of such live sequence programmes which were a fixture of weekend children’s viewing in the UK from the mid-1970s until into the 2000s. Both the BBC and ITV developed strong contributions to the genre down the decades, although they rarely if ever both had strong, popular shows of this type at the same time – perhaps inevitably, it would swing back-and-forth between the two as to who had the most successful format at any given point.
 
That said, the formats were broadly similar – the shows would be studio-based, led by a duo or perhaps a team of presenters, with live guests including various young pop stars and actors of the day. There’d often be an audience full of children in the studio, regular items, games, interviews, and episodes of cartoon series interspersed throughout. The best-known examples of these shows would become well-known pop culture touchstones, and part of the childhood television memories of a generation.
 
Going Live! is certainly one of those best-known examples, and by 1990 was probably at the height of its powers. Being from the Saturday between Christmas and New Year this particular example was not, in fact, a live show, but a pre-recorded version retitled Gone Live! and consisting of the regular teaming linking between the usual cartoons and other items without the audience or guests. The final 40 minutes was then all built around this adaptation of A Christmas Carol, using the Going Live! team as the stars of the story. 

Cast and crew:
The presenters of Going Live!, Sarah Greene and Philip Schofield, had already become well-known on children’s television through the 1980s through presenting Blue Peter and the Children’s BBC ‘broom cupboard’ weekday afternoon strand respectively. They take on the main Scrooge and ‘Scratchit’ roles here, with Greene probably getting the Scrooge part – Sarah Scrooge – because of her greater actual acting experience, having previously appeared in the likes of Doctor Who. Schofield clearly did also have at least some acting ambitions himself, as not long after this he took over the lead in Jason and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in the West End, but Greene was clearly the stronger and more confident actor. As a six-year-old at this time, I labour under the misunderstanding that Schofield’s name was “Philips Gofield.”
 
Also a well-known element of Going Live! were the comedy duo Trevor and Simon, Trevor Neal and Simon Hickson, who had been brought onto the programme to give a child-friendly version of the kind of alternative comedy of the Young Ones and Blackadder generation which had become popular through the 1980s. Trevor and Simon’s material, however, still had plenty to engage and amuse across the generations, and they appear in multiple roles here – framing the story as their regular ‘World of the Strange’ paranormal storyteller characters, and also popping up in their ‘Swing Your Pants’ folk singer guises.
 
Most importantly, however, Hickson and Neal actually wrote the whole thing, too. Peter Leslie was the director and David Mercer the producer, with the special being recorded across two days earlier in the month, on the 4^th and 5^th of December.

Underdone Potato:
The ‘World of the Strange’ wraparounds take place in a timeless, cod-Victorian misty street setting, but the actual main action of the story is very firmly of its time. Sarah Scrooge runs a typically yuppy-looking, late-Thatcherite hard-nosed big business empire, with big shoulders, big cordless phones, big green-and-black computer displays and Stock-Aitken-Waterman second-ranker Sonia, exactly the type of person you would expect to turn up as a guest on Going Live!, as one of the charity collectors. The other charity collector is Peter Simon, who presented Going Live!’s game show segment, Double Dare.
 
Schofield is poor Philip Scratchit, office underling, who we see in a scene from home is ‘married’ here to the Going Live! cookery slot presenter, and future co-presenter of the show’s Saturday successor Live & Kicking, Emma Forbes. Their offspring is of course Schofield’s sidekick from throughout his children’s television presenting days, the puppet Gordon the Gopher, here rechristened ‘Tiny Gordon’ for the occasion. Oddly, despite the workplace setting being contemporary, the Scratchits’ home is a very 1950s-type set-up.

 
Scratchit is invited round Sarah’s trendy early 90s flat for Christmas Eve, but this turns out to be a trick so she can frame him for being arrested for stealing her hi-fi system – another very of-its-period prop. Sarah is then visited by the ghost of her former business partner Jacob Marley, who is played by Rowland Rivron. Rivron is one of those performers who most of the audience might recognise as being someone they have seen in something, but would be unable to place or name without a bit of help, who has nonetheless spent many years since the 1980s cropping up in a range of British musical and comedy – and sometimes both – TV shows.
 
The Marley played by Rivron is something of a departure – no chains, instead the hell of constantly having to keep a white suit clean, which isn’t a bad substitute gag. The thing is, though, it’s made clear he’s not actually being punished – he was a nice person who enjoyed Christmas, and it’s Scrooge who’s the only bad one. He also gets a gag about being off to Elvis Presley’s Wild Sherry Party, which reminded me that for years and years, through all my growing up certainly, Elvis was pretty much the most famously dead person whose being dead could be safely joked about without fear of offending or upsetting anybody. Is there a modern day equivalent of this, I wonder…?

 
Past:
Smashing through a wall in Sarah Scrooge’s apartment much like Robbie Coltrane as the ‘Spirit of Christmas’ in another BBC spoof version of a couple of years beforehand, it’s Red Dwarf computer face Norman Lovett as a Hell’s Angel-type spirit wearing a winged motorcycle helmet left over from an old Doctor Who story. I quite liked this, as it placed it very much within the BBC of my youth, where all the shows the BBC made and had ever made all seemed to exist together within Television Centre.
 
Anyway, the Spirit shows Sarah some of the action from the office at Christmas time a few years beforehand, and there’s an implication that she might have killed Marley by kicking him out of a window. She insists she didn’t, but it’s not clear how much we’re meant to believe her – and as the Spirit points out, who would anyway, with her reputation? We also see her declining the offer of a mince pie from Marley on the basis that she’s a vegetarian – a nice little reference to the pies’ real origins. Or juts one of the man fun, throwaway gags in the piece, one or the other!

 
Present:
Much like Rivron, the actor cast as the Ghost of Christmas Present here is someone many in the audience will know by sight but then get frustrated they can’t remember who it is. It’s Susie Blake, who certainly at this point would have been familiar to many for her work with Victoria Wood, most notably as her blunt in-vision continuity announcer.
 
There’s a nice gag which it’s surprising hasn’t been done more about the Ghost of Christmas Present literally being the ghost of a Christmas present – complete with box-on-legs type costume. The whole thing is filled with corny gags of this type, but it knows they’re corny and isn’t earnestly trying to sell them to you. The whole thing is a send-up of itself, a knowing nod-and-a-wink to the audience as their Saturday morning favourites mess around, which is exactly the kind of thing that A Christmas Carol being so familiar a trope allows you to do. This being the time period that it is, there’s also a gag an the expense of Channel 4’s famous 1982 animation The Snowman and its “Walking in the Air” song, both very much as strong a part of the secular British Christmas as the Carol at this point.
 
The Spirit takes Sarah Scrooge to see the Scratchits being very poor indeed, and there’s an interesting bit at the end of this section where Scrooge has left the scene upset, and the Spirit then turns to the family and congratulates them on their performance – so in this version, they’re in on it with the Spirits.

Yet to Come:
The Spirit initially appears in its traditional guise, but is eventually unmasked, or unhooded, as… rapper and television presenter Normski, for no apparent reason other than yes, he is also exactly the sort of person who might have turned up on Going Live! at this point.
 
We tick forward a decade to the year 2000, where we see Sarah’s desk at work being cleared away, although it isn’t entirely clear what’s supposed to have happened to her. Of course the set hasn’t been changed at all from the 1990 version, so it’s still filled with those green-and-black displays which would have been long gone by the real 2000 – it would have been Windows machines by then. Not that anybody making this would have known or cared about that, but it was an interesting reminder of just how quickly some things really did change over those ten years, as the internet era arrived.

What’s To-Day:
Sarah and Normski agree to skip a couple of pages of unnecessary dialogue, so they can get to the big party scene at the end. Sarah does get to have a chat with a boy at her window, and arranges for a nut roast to be sent to the vegetarian Scratchits. We then have the big party at her place, which is an excuse for the show’s second interminable musical number, and a whole bunch of cameos from various musical, acting and presenting names of the time – Kim Wilde, Rosemarie Ford, Annabel Giles and Andi Peters are among those present. At the finale Sarah, having signed over all her money to Scratchit, asks to borrow the taxi fare she needs – and we see his eyes go devil red, as it’s suggested he is perhaps now the miner… or miser, sorry, to repeat one of the show’s own gags!

 
Review:
I don’t remember watching this at the time, although I can’t help but feel that I must have done, as I was every inch the Going Live! viewer, and I know for certain that I did see one of the preceding shows that morning, the final episode of Breakfast Serials. I wish I did remember more about it from the time, as I would probably have got more of the gags and references to people and things from Going Live! which time has wiped away from my memory – well it has been 32 years now, after all!
 
It does what it does very well, though – takes those presenters and characters and references and running jokes with which the intended audience will already be well-versed, and uses the familiar tale of the Carol as a framework upon which to hang them. And remember, they didn’t have to do this. For a pre-recorded programme on the weekend between Christmas and New Year, they could simply have shot a few links joining together a load of cartoons and ‘best of’ bits. The fact that they took the time, effort and trouble to mount a full-on 40-minute production of the Carol, as cheap and cheerful as it doubtless was comparatively-speaking, is to be applauded.
 
I love the whole world in which this is set – not just that Saturday morning, Sarah and Phil and Trevor and Simon world of my young childhood, but also the world of BBC Television Centre and the types of stars who could have been wandering the corridors there to be roped into this, and of the time and place. When Sarah smashes her square clock-radio-alarm thing and then gives herself a new one for Christmas, I’m watching it thinking ‘I had one like that!’ It’s of its era, no question, but for someone who was a child at the time that only makes it all the more appealing.
 
The one thing I could have done without were the two musical numbers, from acts way down the 1990 cast list – Twenty 4 Seven and Hothouse Flowers. They just seem to bring the whole thing grinding to a halt, and you’d much rather have Trevor and Simon back on the screen doing something amusing. Or just some more of the running joke about Sarah being unable to remember it’s “Bah humbug!”, so we get hobnobs, hotpants and more!

 

In a nutshell:
If you grew up watching Saturday morning BBC Television in the late 1980s or early 90s, you’ll very probably enjoy this – but anybody else may just be left a tad confused!
 
Links:
IMDb

The Lost Carols - Christmas Night

Title:
Christmas Night
 
Format:
Live television ballet performance
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
1946 (broadcast live on the BBC Television Service at 9pm on December 25^th that year)
 
Length:
60 minutes
 
Setting:
Victorian
 
Background:
Ten years after what ought to have been the very first television adaptation of A Christmas Carol in Britain – and, indeed, the world – had failed to happen due to the illness of its star, the BBC Television Service finally got in on the act with the debut of the Carol on British television. Although in the meantime, there had been versions broadcast by the fledgling commercial television operations in the United States.
 
The BBC Television Service had been shut down for the duration of the Second World War in September 1939, and did not resume until a year after the conflict had finished, in the summer of 1946. This, then, was British television’s first post-war Christmas, and it had not yet come to dominate the day in the UK as it would through the second half of the 20^th century. For one thing, the number of people who had sets was numbered in no more than the tens of thousands at the very, very most.
 
For another, the BBC’s broadcasts were still limited to anyone within range of the transmitter above their Alexandra Palace studios – which basically meant London and the surrounding counties, although in practice in favourable weather conditions the service could be picked up a great deal further away. For example, when going through the files related to the television coverage of the 1948 Olympic Games at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre when I was making a documentary about the football commentator Jimmy Jewell, I found a mention of their “viewer in the Channel Islands” having enjoyed the coverage of the opening ceremony!
 
Whether said viewer had a set by this point and was able to watch Christmas Night is almost certainly lost to history, of course. Although one day I would like to try and organise a visit to the WAC to see what if any files they hold on some of these early Carol adaptations!
 
The personnel and technology of the BBC Television Service from Alexandra Palace in 1946 were almost identical to the service which had been suspended seven years earlier. The vast majority of programmes were broadcast live, and although there was now a BBC Film Unit, they did not concern themselves with fiction or entertainment as such. Videotape technology did not yet exist, and film recordings of studio output were not yet in operation, so the entire cast and crew of Christmas Night came in to produce the thing live at Alexandra Palace on the day itself.

Cast and crew:
There’s some heavy musical firepower in operation here, as the music for Christmas Night was by the esteemed English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending and all that. Whether or not the music was actually for this production, however, I’m not so sure. Vaughan Williams had written for the BBC recently when this was broadcast, having composed a piece called Thanksgiving for Victory for them to mark the end of the Second World War.
 
However, he’d also written a “masque” called On Christmas Night twenty years earlier, in 1926, apparently as an American commission. Like the BBC Television Christmas Night, this was based on A Christmas Carol – or “freely adapted” from it – and evidently combined singing, dancing and mime, so it seems very likely, in fact I would say almost certain, that the 1946 television piece was based on it.
 
The producer was Philip Bate, a Scottish-born musicologist of English parentage, who’d been working as a studio manager and then a producer for BBC radio since the mid-1930s. In these early days of BBC Television, ‘producer’ combined what would now understood to be the separate roles of both producer and director, and in these very early days frequently the scriptwriter too, so Bate would have been very much the driving force behind the whole production.
 
Bate had started making programmes for television from Alexandra Palace in 1938, frequently about music in a more educational or general interest capacity rather than musical productions as such. However, he’d also begun to produce concerts and ballets and other such musical specials, and then returned after the break, even producing a section of the special re-opening programme in June 1946.
 
The only cast member named by the BBC’s Radio Times listings magazine at the time was Hubert Foss, who gets a ‘story told by’ credit. Presumably as some form of narrator, although whether he appeared in-vision or only in voiceover I cannot say. I cannot find a record of an actor named Hubert Foss, so I assume he is the Hubert J. Foss who was a journalist and Musical Editor of the Oxford University Press. This Foss had been a regular broadcaster on music programmes for BBC radio and was also an expert on Vaughan Williams, so it seems almost entirely certain that this was he.
 
Underdone Potato:
The character descriptions in the Radio Times billing certainly match up with the titles of the individual pieces from Vaughan Williams’s 1926 On Christmas Night, so we can get some clues as to the content.
 
We know that after some sort of introductory section, some of the music of which draws from existing Christmas carols such as God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, Jacob Marley’s ghost puts in an appearance.
 
I’m confident in saying that the setting of the whole thing is or was Victorian, as one of the musical pieces in Vaughan Williams’s 1926 work is called Victorian Drawing Room, and the Radio Times article previewing BBC Television’s Christmas programmes refers to “a flavour of Dickens” (I know that can just about mean Georgian or… erm… Williamian or whatever, but something Dickensian would commonly be understood to be mid-Victorian).

 
Past:
As with several silent film versions of the story, it does not appear that there are three different spirits in this version, but instead one combined “Spirit of Christmas” – exactly the same name that this combined ghost was given in the 1910 silent film. I wonder if Vaughan Williams had seen it…?
 
The Radio Times stated that “a highlight of the programmes is expected to be a musical version of Mrs Fezziwig’s ball,” so it would seem that a version of this part of the book was something of a centrepiece. Which would make sense in a production focused on music and dancing, as this is the part of the story where it most naturally occurs.
 
Assuming the “Mrs” isn’t simply a typographical error, than the focus on Mrs rather than Mr Fezziwig would seem to be a development of this television version – the track names (as I’ve been desperately trying to avoid calling them!) of Vaughan Williams’s work just use the more generic ‘Fezziwig’ without specifying Mr or Mrs. The Fezziwig section does take up a good third of the musical runtime, however, so it does seem to have been a major focus. It’s pleasing to see that a version of Roger de Coverley makes an appearance, as specified by Dickens.
 
Present:
There are sections of the music titled Bob Cratchit’s Christmas Party and Bob Cratchit’s Toast, so it seems as if there was some sort of version of the Cratchit ‘Christmas Present’ scene, but more than that I cannot tell you.
 
Yet to Come:
The Cratchit music is towards the end and appears to be immediately followed by the finale, so I’m unsure as to whether there was a ‘Yet to Come’ section in this version.
 
What’s To-Day:
It all seems to end with a version of the English folk dance Black Nag and then Procession of the Nativity, so perhaps had a more overtly Christian conclusion than elsewhere.
 
Review:
I only wish I could tell you more! I can listen to versions of the music, of course, which I suppose is more than can be said for other lost versions. It certainly sounds appropriately festive, and you can see – or rather, hear – why it seemed like a suitable candidate for television, as it does have a lot of the feel of what we might now regard a Christmas film soundtrack. I like the way Vaughan Williams works in bits and pieces from various existing carols and other Christmas music.
 
Sadly, I have so far been unable to find any contemporary reviews of the production.
 
In a nutshell:
Not so much ‘lost’ as aired live once and never recorded, but it has its place in history as British television’s very first version of A Christmas Carol.
 
Links:
BBC Genome
British Film Institute

The Lost Carols - Scrooge, 1936, television

Title:

Scrooge
 
Format:
Scheduled but never broadcast live performed reading for television
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
1936 – it was due to be broadcast live on the BBC Television service twice, both on December 24^th that year
 
Length:
Somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, approximately
 
Setting:
Unknown, but probably Victorian

 
Background:
This is a very lost Carol. On Wikipedia – until I removed it after researching this article – it used to be listed as the earliest ever television version of the Carol. However, while I was putting together this piece I discovered that, sadly, that’s not the case. It was certainly billed in the listings. But due to the illness of its star, in the event it never actually happened.

Following various experimental broadcasts throughout the early 1930s, the BBC had begun the world’s first regular television service in November 1936. It was not yet the popular mass medium it would become – sets were an expensive luxury, and the BBC had only a single transmitter at their Alexandra Palace studios in London. Thus, the signals were available only to those in London and the surrounding area, although in certain conditions they could be picked up much further afield.
 
The BBC Television Service broadcast for only a few hours a day, and although there were some demonstration and bought-in films, almost all of its output was shown live. This consisted of assorted talks, musical and variety programmes, dramas and readings. One oddity was that there were two competing technical standards for television in use at the time – from the Baird and Marconi companies.
 
The BBC had agreed to start its service using an alternation of the two systems – but the receiving sets were not compatible, so if you only had a set of a certain type, for the first few months of the BBC’s service you could only watch programmes every other week. Christmas week in 1936 fell under the Marconi system, which was regarded as the superior and the Baird system was eventually abandoned.

 
This was to have been a live performance broadcast twice on Christmas Eve, Thursday the 24^th of December 1936, under the title Scrooge. It went out once just after 3pm, and again just after 9pm. I say ‘just after’ as its billing in the BBC’s Radio Times listings magazine is for “Programme Summary, followed by Scrooge,” so it’s difficult to say precisely at what time it would have started or how long it might have been.
 
I have found no information about what, if anything, was broadcast instead of Scrooge that Christmas Eve. It’s possible that a script or other information about the abandoned 1936 version may survive at the BBC’s wonderful Written Archives Centre in Caversham. But until such time as I can perhaps make some enquiries there, it’s difficult to say much more.
 
Cast and crew:
This seems to have been due to be a one-man performance from Bransby Williams, a man with a strong connection to both Dickens in general and the character of Scrooge in particular. Eight years before this he’d starred in another lost Carol, the 1928 short film Scrooge, which is believed to have been the first sound version.

Excerpt from the Yorkshire Observer,
24th December 1936

 
Williams had been born only two months after Dickens’s death, in 1870. He’d been particularly associated with the author’s characters on stage for many years, specialising in such productions as an actor-manager with his own company. Like Seymour Hicks before him, he’d made a particular success of Scrooge in the theatre, having played the part in various productions since 1898, when he gave a one-man monologue version as part of the Christmas bill at the London Pavilion. The one-man show of Scrooge was, then, clearly something he was well-practised at by 1936!
 
Williams had also made various recorded versions of a dramatic readings and performances from the book, the first released as early as 1905. He continued making various recordings as Scrooge for over forty years, with the final one being released on the Decca label in 1948. He’d also played Scrooge for the BBC on the radio on more than one occasion, since at least 1932.
 
Williams did eventually get to play Scrooge for BBC Television in its first full-cast version of the Carol in 1950. Then in 1952, some sixteen years late, he did eventually get to give his one-man version, in a solo performance of “scenes from A Christmas Carol”. This 1952 version may have not been dissimilar to what was due to have been broadcast in 1936, as it’s in a not much longer slot of 20 minutes. That 1952 performance actually survives as a film recording of the live broadcast, and was repeated by the BBC in 1953, 1955 and 1960, but alas I currently have no way of watching it.
 
While researching this piece, I found an article Williams wrote which was published in the Larne Times on Boxing Day 1936 – just two days after he had been due to give television its first Scrooge. Writing about his love of Dickens and the importance the author and particularly A Christmas Carol held for him, Williams wrote that:
 
“If Dickens had written no other story than the Christmas Carol – and be it remembered he wrote twenty-four full-sized stories, hundreds of short ones and hundreds of miscellaneous articles – if he had written no other it is possible his name would be just as famous. He would still have been the man who was Christmas.”
 
This particularly struck me as I wrote something similar in my introductory essay in this blog, about why I love the story so much. Not a particularly original thought, I grant you, but nice to know that someone so important to the performed history of the Carol as Williams felt the same way.
 
In a nutshell:
It never happened.
 
Links:
BBC Genome

A CBeebies Chistmas Carol

Title:
A CBeebies Christmas Carol
 
Format:
Pre-recorded Christmas pantomime special, shot on multi-camera HD video
 
Country:
UK
 
Production company:
BBC Television
 
Year:
2013 (first shown on the CBeebies channel in the UK on December 20^th that year)
 
Length:
40 minutes
 
Setting:

Fantasy Victorian
 
Background:
The BBC has a long and proud tradition of high-quality children’s television, and the Christmas pantomimes on its CBeebies channel have become a new part of this tradition in the 21^st century. CBeebies – a corruption of ‘CBBC’, or ‘Children’s BBC’ – is a channel aimed at the under-sevens, and was launched in 2002. As with all of the BBC’s public-service channels, it is available on all television platforms in the UK, whether through a rooftop aerial, a cable or a satellite dish.
 
As with a traditional stage pantomime this took place in a theatre, in this case The Crucible in Sheffield – well-known as the home of the World Snooker Championships. Presumably one of the reasons it was chosen was due to how close the audience can get to the thrust stage.
 
It was recorded and edited for television transmission.

 
Cast and crew:
This was the sixth CBeebies panto, and as usual it featured a mixture of the channel’s presenters and the stars of some of its most popular programmes. For the first time, this one also featured some guest stars who’d been well-known on BBC children’s programmes of decades past, presumably to delight the parents or grandparents watching alongside the young children. So seventies and eighties presenters Iain Lachlan, Floella Benjamin and Derek Griffiths all poke their heads around the door, as does nineties Get Your Own Back host Dave Benson Phillips.
 
Of the contemporary generation, long-serving CBeebies presenter Andy Day stars as Scrooge, with fellow presenter Cat Sandion as the narrator and Children’s BBC stalwart Chris Jarvis as Bob Cratchit, and a host of other guest appearances and familiar faces from the channel alongside them of course.
 
Jon Spooner directed the theatrical production, with Bridget Caldwell directing the television recording – Caldwell was an experienced TV director who’s worked extensively on both multi-camera studio productions and live theatrical events. The producer was Jon Hancock, who’d worked on various other CBeebies productions, and the script was written by Claire Duffy, who later scripted a very well-received young children’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the channel.
 
Duffy’s script for A Christmas Carol is available to download from the BBC Writersroom website: click here.
 

Underdone Potato:
After an opening song and introduction from narrator Cat, we meet Mr Scrooge – quite a young incarnation this, although probably seeming old enough to the target audience – and his three employees. When the audience are told that Scrooge hates Christmas, it’s interesting to see him being booed like a pantomime villain. I know this is a pantomime, but it’s interesting because of course the story doesn’t really have a villain, as such, as Scrooge is technically the hero, in some ways.
 
We get a version of the Nephew Fred scene, before Scrooge heads off home to bed. There’s no Marley scene, although the animated character of Tree Fu Tom provides an equivalent. He doesn’t appear to Scrooge, but is projected onto the back of the stage once Scrooge is asleep, telling the audience that Scrooge will receive visits from three ‘friends’ of his, before there’s a bit of audience participation to create the magic to make them appear.

 
Past:
Derek Griffiths delights the older members of the audience with his appearance as… Well, the first ‘present’ to Scrooge. There’s never any mention of ghosts throughout the whole thing, or even whether it’s the past or the present, but Griffiths certainly looks ghostly in his costume, and the implication is clear enough for the members of the audience who know the story.

We visit a school, although not Scrooge’s own schooldays as such. Instead, he’s encouraged to join in with some messy antics around decorating a Christmas tree. Following this we get the Fezziwigs’ party, with Mr Tumble himself Justin Fletcher as Mrs Fezziwig, and long-serving presenter Pui Fan Lee as Mr Fezziwig.
 
It’s in this section where all of the other old Children’s BBC faces appear as guests at the party, with Floella Benjamin even bringing Humpty along for a rare outing! Griffiths points out that Scrooge enjoyed all the dancing, which he denies, and we get classic bit of panto “Oh yes you were!” business.
 
Present:
CBeebies presenter Katrina Bryan is the second ‘friend’, with a nod to the original’s appearance by wearing a crown of holly around her head.

 
She only shows Scrooge one vision – the Cratchits’ house, with Bob and his wife and their two children, a boy and a girl. The boy is never named as Tim, and doesn’t have anything wrong with him.
 
Yet to Come:
Steven Kynman as his Michael McIntyre-like CBeebies character Robert the Robot is the third ‘friend’, and there’s a bit of comedy business where he initially appears under the traditional cloak and hood, before stumbling his way onto the stage. He does specifically claim to be “from the future”, however.

 
He doesn’t show any visions of what’s to come, though – instead, simply teaching Scrooge, through the medium of song, how to be nice to people. This seems to do the trick, and by the end of it Scrooge is fully redeemed and regretful of his previous actions.
 
What’s To-Day:
Scrooge decides to throw a big party for everyone, sending out invites without saying who they’re from, and gathering everyone together on stage for the big reveal that it’s actually him, and he now loves Christmas. There is a hint of the little joke Scrooge plays on Bob on Boxing Day as he pretends to be cross with him before revealing he’s the one behind the party, before it all ends – of course! – with a song and a dance.
 
The two Cratchit children sign off with a version of Tim’s traditional toast – although, interestingly for a Christmas special, Duffy’s script makes it as secular as they can by changing it to, “Bless us all at Christmas, every one!”

Review:
I can imagine how difficult it is to try and create a version of A Christmas Carol which is suitable for very young children, and yet done in live action rather than with animation or with puppets. While this is clearly a very child-friendly version of the story, it does go to show that if done with attention and care even an adaptation so far removed from the source material can demonstrate what a strong framework the fine old story is.
 
Obviously I am very much not in the target audience for this, but I could appreciate that it was done well. There’s something rather charming about seeing the children in the live theatre audience erupt with glee and tumultuous applause when various of their favourites appear. Matched only, perhaps, by the similar reactions from the parents and grandparents in the audience when some of the familiar faces from their own childhood make guest appearances. All of them looking pretty pleased to be there, too.
 
If I had to make a criticism, I would perhaps say that none of the songs are up there with the best ones from the 1970 or the Muppet versions. But really, it’s hard to find fault with this – a fun little production which achieves exactly what it sets out to do. Certainly it’s a cut above the vast majority of other young child-oriented versions out there.
 
In a nutshell:
I’m sure this will be remembered fondly by many who were young children at the time as their first memory of A Christmas Carol.
 
Links:
BBC blog entry
CBeebies Wiki