It is the festive period which means it is the time of the year to watch A Christmas Carol. There are many versions of this story and now we have a new one, produced by Tom Hardy and Ridley Scott and written by Steven Knight the creator of Peaky Blinders. This is a new three-part series which will tell the classic Dicken's story in a new way. We all know the story of the grumpy old business who is haunted by his past and becomes anxious about his future.
This is a rough and dark retelling of this classic story, set in 1843. This episode has mixed reviews but we begin this episode by meeting Jacob Marely in his grave and we discover he is in purgatory and wants to repent. We meet all the important characters in this first episode and meet the first of the ghosts but Scrooge only sees Marley in this episode. This makes it seem that a lot and maybe too much is going to be crammed into the remaining two episodes as they took this entire first episode to build everything up. Stephen Graham plays Marley, wrapped up in his chains and struggling to come to terms with the supernatural events surrounding him.
Along with Marley we meet Scrooge and the Cratchit family which is hiding a secret. Scrooge is played by Guy Pearce; he is a stern and harsh character. He is what you think Scrooge would be like. At the moment there is nothing that makes this characterisation of Scrooge different to the other actors who have played this famous character.
The Cratchit family are always the family we feel bad for in every adaptation but what is interesting in this version, Mrs Cratchit played by Vinette Robinson who shows the effect of this life has on women in this time. Also, we see Mrs Cratchit throwing away the letters her son writes to the people he believes saved his life, she is not only lying to her son but also lying to her husband. It is an interesting character to watch as Robinsons performance is strong but the character itself it difficult to connect to at the moment yet we want to know why she is lying and what she has done. Her husband Bob Cratchit played by Joe Alwyn is still Scrooge's clerk but this version he is very sassy and he appears to not be afraid to speak his mind to his boss even though Scrooge may not be pleased with his comments.
We do meet the Ghost of Christmas Past in this episode but not in great detail, we see him tell Marley that his fate is in the hands of Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Past is played by Andy Serkis who also like a character from Star Wars due to Serkis's costume and performance but it was still entertaining to watch. All the characters introduced look miserable even though it is supposed to be almost Christmas. This shows the reality of what these characters are going through which a modern-day audience can relate to. This is due to even though it is Christmas, life doesn’t stop and it isn’t always easy and happy this time of year, sometimes it is difficult.
Overall, this first episode is slow and we spend a lot of time introducing the main characters which we all already know. The performances of these characters are great but we spend so much time in waiting for some action to happen that the first half of this episode is a bit boring. Once Marley appears to Scrooge that is where this episode gets interesting. It feels as if we spent too much time in this first episode to get somewhere that the next two episodes there will be too much going on as they have to fit everything into the remaining episodes as they spent too much time in the first episode building everything up. It was good to have time to really see and get to know the characters and their relationships in this first episode but overall this first episode falls a bit flat. Hopefully the remaining episodes will make up for the first episode.
