Unlike one of my colleagues, I rather rate Dickens’ literary output (while condemning his attitude to women) but have a general suspicion of Mark Gatiss: his collaborations with Steven Moffat, which saw the pair commit crimes of adaptation against Sherlock and Dracula, appears to have imbued both with an overconfidence in their own cleverness and a love of a limp last-minute plot twist.
Nevertheless, a few years after Jack Thorne revived A Christmas Carol for the Old Vic, fellow screenwriter Gatiss took a stab at making it a more grim and spooky affair.
