London 1843. Christmas Eve. A snowy graveyard. A man walks into the cemetery wearing a top hat. He urinates on the grave after yelling an expletive. It’s the grave of Jacob Marley.
The camera zooms down to a body sitting in the dark: one of the dead Marley Brothers.
Crackling sounds echo around the body. Dirt and mud drop on his face. He takes off coins from his eyes. He’s alive. Buried alive.
And so begins “A Christmas Carol,” the new modern adaption that is running on FX.
The tale is a dark retelling of the Charles Dickens Christmas classic. It contains mature language and themes. There’s nudity and sexual content. What has been a family-friendly tale of angst and despair as it journeys toward full redemption for Ebenezer Scrooge, now adds explicit and coarse material to make its point.
Pop culture has shifted toward more gritty retellings of classic stories or characters like Batman’s “The Dark Knight” and Superman’s “Man of Steel” being grounded retellings of superhero stories.
But this telling of “A Christmas Carol” is an attempt by FX to capitalize on Christmas and to earn attention from holiday film fans migrating to Hallmark and other channels trying to marry Christmas (no pun intended) with the brand of cable networks. And FX is a gritty brand.
A modern story for a civilized age
There is no shortage of “A Christmas Carol” adaptions, and they span different genres and styles. It’s no surprise since Dickens himself presented the story in more than one format. In addition to writing the story, he read it aloud, first to the Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute.
Dickens went on to edit the story and adapt it for different mediums so that people could hear it rather than read the tale, and tours of the story’s performance spanned England and other parts of the world.
Theater became the home of “A Christmas Carol” through much of the 20th century. Performances span from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Omaha, Nebraska. Some of these theatrical performances still exist today since the tale is so well-know and celebrated during the holiday season.
Several musical adaptions were performed onstage and then shown live on television, beginning in 1936 with a show on BBC Television. Plenty of others followed, including “The Gospel According to Scrooge,” which focused on the religious aspects of the story and was featured as a television special with Dean Jones.
But it wasn’t until 1959 with “Tales From Dickens: A Christmas Carol” that we got our first videotaped or filmed version of the show. Different retellings like “Mr. Scrooge” (1964), “Bah, Humbug!: The Story of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’” (1994) and several others joined the fray. Major actors played the lead role. Patrick Stewart starred as Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” (1999) and Kelsey Grammer did the same in “A Christmas Carol: The Musical” (2004).
The 2019 FX adaption features Guy Pearce in the Scrooge role, with Andy Serkis playing the Ghost of Christmas Past, Charlotte Riley as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Stephen Graham as Jacob Marley.
This year’s retelling strikes an unusual chord, though, because it is rated TV-MA and not something you’d think to watch with the whole family.
“I don’t think it’s anything really that new that ‘A Christmas Carol’ would be adapted for TV for FX. I think what’s unusual about the adaptation is how dark it is,” said Tom Nunan, a lecturer at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and former president of United Paramount Network (now known as The CW).
The TV-MA version is different than the “sweeter” versions we grew up on. It’s a content decision. So why make that choice?
Attention
The TV landscape is loud and full of content. It’s hard to stand out. And that’s one reason why FX decided to add the gritty version, Nunan believes.
“How do I make noise in this credibly cut, cluttered and dense, competitive environment? And usually the way producers and networks make noise is by pushing the boundaries of whatever it is that they’re producing or distributing,” he said.
He said “A Christmas Carol” is often nice and mild rather than dark and mature. So the modern adaption is a bit of a shift. Still, it’s a popular intellectual property that people will want to watch again, which makes it a solid bet for producers.
“This is material that is ripe to be reimagined today because networks and producers want to be as authentic and as edgy and as noisy as possible so that they can generate attention and audience captivation because it’s so darn competitive,” Nunan said.
He added, “They’re delivering it in a manner that’s really unique and very true to their brand.”
The decision also applies to a bigger change happening in culture and television now. Christmas has become a popular topic for streaming services and television channels.
And that plays into “A Christmas Carol.” A dark, gritty, mature version of the show may be a sign that there is too much Christmas content.
Too much Christmas
Almost every channel or streaming service out there has Christmas content. Lifetime, Freeform, Hallmark, Netflix, Disney Plus. We’ve talked about this before. Everyone is trying to find the right Christmas story for their service and their audience.
FX’s adaption may be a sign that there’s too much Christmas content.
Networks want to be everything to everyone. They want “Orange is the New Black” and a Christmas special project. That’s why Disney Plus and Netflix are both heavily investing in Christmas content.
And that’s making it hard for networks to distinguish themselves. Lifetime, Freeform and Hallmark have such similar content that it’s hard to stand out, which is why “A Christmas Carol” on FX makes sense for the network.
“Is there too much Christmas content?” Nunan asked. “Is there just enough? I guess Goldilocks will be the only one who ever knows, you know. But it is kind of remarkable how much Christmas content is out there.”
Historically, there are a lot of classic Christmas films like “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) and “White Christmas” (1954). There are some box office success with “Home Alone” (1990) and “Die Hard,” (1988) too.
But there have been plenty of flops. Recently, “Last Christmas” (2019) tanked with $34 million earned at the U.S. box office.
“Seasonal films, typically, are not huge successes,” Nunan said. “There have been a lot of misses when it comes to Christmas movies. It’s interesting to see that despite the spotty nature of it with motion pictures and on the small screen, all these giant entertainment concerns are really doubling down.”