On BBC One, it’s airing over three nights, and I’m betting the lack of incident in the first hour will lead to ample tune-out. At least FX is airing A Christmas Carol all at once. At its very best, it’s an attempted in-depth character study of Scrooge, one that meshes very poorly with the inspiring structure of the story, while at its worst it’s an ill-paced, ill-focused version of A Christmas Carol that doesn’t even get up to the arrival of Jacob Marley until over an hour into its three-hour running time. The result is that FX has made a Christmas Carol that very much isn’t for children - seriously, the wee ones will be either bored or scandalized - and probably isn’t really for adults either. Finally, we have a Christmas Carol in which Ebenezer Scrooge can bellow “Fuck!!!” several times for limited reason and where viewers can be exposed to one fleeting - not prurient, mind you - bare rump, as FX endeavors finally to put the “ass” in “Christmass.” There have certainly been attempts at gritty and dark interpretations of the Dickens text, but few as random and gratuitous as Steven Knight brings to the table in his new take for FX and BBC. Some of the spookier elements from the Dickens original can be left in provided you balance the frights with a Mickey Mouse, a Mister Magoo or a cavalcade of Muppets. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carolis one of the more adapted texts in the English language and the primary instinct for those bringing the novella to the screen has generally been to make it as broad and family-friendly as possible.
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