...as BBC brings F-words and urinating on graves to Dickens’ Christmas classic

IT’S a festive favourite that helps many families get into the Christmas spirit. But a new BBC version of A Christmas Carol risks looks likely to have parents and purists reaching for the off switch.

The three-part series, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steve Knight, begins with a boy urinating on the grave of Jacob Marley and features dialogue littered with expletives, including the F-word.

It is the first major adaptation of the Charles Dickens’s classic to be considered unsuitable for children. It will be screened at the 9pm watershed, although many youngsters will still be up during the school holidays.

Claire Tomalin, who wrote a celebrated biography of Dickens, said: ‘I don’t think he would have been very pleased.

‘Dickens didn’t need people urinating on graves. He reached people through the power of his words and his imagination.’ The new drama, billed as one of the highlights of the BBC’s Christmas schedule, is a far cry from the classic 1951 feature film version featuring Alastair Sim, which remains popular with family audiences.

Starring Australian actor Guy Pearce as Scrooge, Line Of Duty star Stephen Graham as Jacob Marley and Andy Serkis as the ghost of Christmas Past, the opening shot of the new adaptation shows a young boy describing Marley as ‘a skinflint b ***** d’ while defiling his grave.

Another scene has Scrooge complaining about a din outside, asking: ‘How am I supposed to work with all this f ****** noise.’

The F-word features again when Marley’s ghost complains that he is unable to escape everlasting damnation.

But the show’s cast have tried to justify their version of the Christmas classic, published first in 1843, which will be shown over three consecutive nights.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Guy Pearce said: ‘I have seen a couple of versions of A Christmas Carol – there’s always something a little cosy about it. Whereas this one is really confronting, it’s really heartbreaking, it’s really devastating, it’s really emotional.’

Charlotte Riley plays the ghost of Christmas Present as Scrooge’s sister rather than as the traditional Father Christmas figure.

She told the BBC’s One Show that Knight ‘has read between the lines of Dickens’s words and eked out the psychology of why Scrooge is the way he is, which post-Freud is what we are all kind of interested in these days.’ A Christmas Carol begins on December 22 on BBC1.