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Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol has been endlessly adapted to stage, screen, and television often attracting some of each generations greatest actors to the role of Scrooge. The adaptations have run from dramatic to the farcical, but few are as unique as the one aired on the BBC and adapted by Steven Knight.

BBC

Produced by Knight and Ridley Scot this television adaptation retain the core plot, a miserly and mean businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) is visited by spirits on Christmas Eve that by showing him the truth of his life and life in general effect a change to transform the man into a person of altruism and compassion. What Steven Knight however makes serious alterations to the nature of Scrooge’s cruelty and the deep emotional psychological wounds the man carries, while presenting the events in the truly terrifying nature implied by their mere existence.

This adaptation is a piece of horror fiction with the supernatural as something beyond comprehension and therefore something frightening to the soul. The series, for it was presented in 3 parts originally, is also visually fantastic. I can think of no other adaptation that wows with such amazing shots as this one. Instead of trying to make the three spirits the focus of inventive make-up or special effects director Nick Murphy works on the dream logic and unreal aspect of Scrooge’s vision and travels.

This program is not for family viewing. It deals with hard subjects of not only cruelty but also of abuse, exploring abuse in Scrooge’s childhood that he revisits in a manner on the world as an adult. Knight is clearly aware that victims of abuse often through their unhealed wounds become abusers themselves. As such Scrooge’s eventual transformation is not one created but ignorance of the world being removed but of a man facing the horrors of his past and understanding how they made him the monster he had become.

Dark, gothic, and a true piece of horror the 2019 A Christmas Carol is a wonder that terrifies and transforms. It is available for purchase on Amazon prime for a mere $2.00.