A Scrooge that’ll move you
The casting of Hollywood heart-throb Guy Pearce as the ageing miser Scrooge in a new BBC adaptation of A Christmas Carol throws a very different light on Charles Dickens’s cantankerous creation.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, the three-part series looks into Scrooge’s distant past to see what made him so, well, Scrooge-like. ‘The Scrooge we feel we know is different in this show,’ says Guy. ‘He’s still an unappealing and twisted man, but we look at what made him become so bitter and damaged. What Steven has done is take Dickens’s material and then dug in further.
‘Scrooge has had a rough time from childhood, so rather than portraying him as a character who just hates everyone and hates Christmas, we look in detail at his behaviour and his psychology, and it’s surprisingly touching.’
The premise of the story is that Scrooge and his business partner Marley committed terrible misdeeds in the past. Marley (Line Of Duty’s Stephen Graham) has died, but is told by the Ghost of Christmas Past (Andy Serkis) that his fate is tied to Scrooge’s and he can only escape purgatory if they both repent. He visits Scrooge from beyond the grave, and the soul-searching begins.
‘Dickens’s idea of Scrooge being taken back through his life and needing to take a look at himself is still there, but the journey we take him on is far more painful and emotional than any we’ve seen before,’ says Guy. ‘We see early on that Scrooge is missing his old friend Marley, and that helps pull on the heartstrings. The crux of it is having the viewers onside, so they want these characters to survive and become better versions of themselves. Even though he’s a bully, we want Scrooge to get better, and that journey is powerful because at first he fights against it.’
■ A Christmas Carol starts tonight at 9pm on BBC1.