What the Dickens!

The BBC’s latest adaptation of A Christmas Carol clearly wasn’t for everyone (letters), but it’s interesting how many people are angry that it was not family friendly.

in fact, it was broadcast after the 9pm watershed and there was a warning before it started that it contained strong language and scenes some viewers might find upsetting.

it may be a beloved Christmas tale, but it’s also a ghost story. Charles Dickens gave it a happy ending, but he was not writing feel- good literature. No dramatisation has an obligation to follow a book exactly and any adaptation worth its salt must do more than convey A Christmas Carol’s warmth and the frivolity of this festive time.

it must demonstrate the gloom of ebenezer Scrooge’s life and explore the social and moral issues central to Dickens’s fiction: poverty, miserliness, guilt and redemption. EMILIE LAMPLOUGH,

Trowbridge, Wilts. AS PeNSiONeRS, we are set to lose the free TV licence.

We rely on television for entertainment during the long, winter evenings and are unhappy with the substandard service from the BBC.

it advertises its own programmes at every opportunity, which is tiresome, but our biggest gripe is the number of repeats. Programmes are repeated on all three channels.

On any given day, we have calculated that a third of BBC1’s programming is repeats, while for BBC2 it’s worse, at around 43 per cent. So when it comes to the TV licence, we feel we should be entitled to reduce our payment by a similar percentage. JOHN and JENNY WATSON, Dereham, Norfolk.