It’s a familiar tale - kind of. A modern-day female entrepreneur who hates Christmas finds herself on a spiritual journey (i.e. with three ghosts in tow) to learn the true meaning of holiday spirit.
On paper, and especially with an actress as talented as Suranne Jones in the lead role, Christmas Carole should be a refreshingly avant garde take on a festive staple. Sadly, however, it falls well short of the brilliance of Dickens’ original spooky story. There are funny moments here and there, in particular the arrival of the ghosts, but becomes overloaded with dialogue and starts to drag.
We begin with a clip reminiscent of a John Lewis Christmas ad. A young girl befriends a lonely old man to the dulcet strains of It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.
“What a load of old crap,” Carole Mackay suddenly interjects, unimpressed with her employees’ “sickly sweet” attempts to promote her brand in anticipation of the festive season. Carole has built a successful business selling single use Christmas party decorations and subsequently established herself as “Christmas Carole.” O, the irony.
BAFTA Award-winning Jones plays the easily unlikeable Carole in a similar vein to Brian Cox’s terrifyingly ruthless Logan Roy in Succession, with swagger and bravado. Jones pulls off Carole’s cold exterior alarmingly well. Pitiless and over-ambitious, Carole would rather her employees produce a dispassionate Christmas ad, but not forgetting a joke at the end, well, because “it is the season to be jolly,” she grimly says.
The real story starts with Carole’s first visitation, which comes when the ghost of her mother suddenly appears alongside her on an elliptical machine during a late-night gym session. Jackie Mackay (Carole’s own Jacob Marley, played by Rosie Cavaliero) soon makes way for the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come and well, the rest you know.
This should have worked brilliantly – the supporting cast reads like a who’s who of British acting treasures. Jo Brand is the Ghost of Christmas Present and Nish Kumar is on Christmas Yet to Come duty, while Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel play Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise respectively – aka the Ghosts of Christmas Past – and comfortably steal the show as they embody the lovable quirks (glasses askew and wig references galore) of the festive favourite comedy duo so skilfully that they could almost pass for the real deal.
Dickens’s Tiny Tim is replaced with a healthy Tiny Singh, the child of Carole’s mistreated assistant, Taj Atwal’s Bobbie Singh-Cratchitt. A welcome twist to the storyline is the fresh perspective that focuses less on Bobbie and her family but instead on Carole’s own, in particular her complicated relationship with her estranged father, whom she blames for her mother’s decision to walk out.
There’s a reason A Christmas Carol is such a classic story. 178 years after the infamous capitalist Ebenezer Scrooge first looked into his own soul and found it wanting, Dickens’ classic is still being endlessly adapted (indeed, AppleTV+ film Spirited, which came out earlier this year, is also a Dickens retread, while Luke Evans has just voiced a new animated version for Netflix, and you can barely move on London theatre stages this year for new and old versions).
Its continued longevity perhaps increases the pressure – or maybe it encourages experimentation. No bad thing, but the perfection of, say, The Muppet Christmas Carol sets a high bar; as contemporary retreads go, Christmas Carole just doesn’t compare. The oldies are most certainly the goodies.
