'A Christmas Carol' Gothic Horror Mini-Series

A HOT Scrooge! Are we going to see his plum pud?

Dickens is rolling in his grave. Rapey Scrooge? Trump-inspired?

Definitely has AHS coating -- a mulatto Mrs. Crachitt? There is a lot of "nope" here.

R2 Mulatto? Really? How old are you, asshat? Regardless, this looks interesting and promising.

What is wrong with mulatto?

MULATTO

It rrrrrolls off the tongue; I like the foreign quality of it. Has a kind of Franco-Italian feel. Like a drink you might order in a coffeeshop.

I know they must use that term in design/art/fashion.

We say "mixed race" these days. And who the hell cares about the ethnicity of the actors in a show with supernatural elements, anyway?

Well in this case it is highly implied she is putting some kind of voodoo curse on him (explaining the ghosts visiting him), so it does seem to be a plot point.

"Mixed race" sounds like a salad selection. How bland.

NOBODY asked for this.

R3 “Octoroon” would be more appropriate

white adjacent EYEtalians?

I wonder what is next?

For Easter will Christ will rise again, undead and angry, to get revenge on the Romans and Jewish religious leaders who sent him to the cross!

Because God is all about love and forgiveness, fuckers.

"There would be shock and outrage today if you saw a classic revival with an all-white cast. The days when black actors were confined, in Shakespeare, to playing Othello or Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus are long gone. I have seen actors such as Sophie Okonedo, Sharon D Clarke, Cecilia Noble, Hugh Quarshie, Adrian Lester, David Oyelowo and Chiwetel Ejiofor prove they can play anything and everything. All this represents real progress."

The trailer clearly represents such a version of "A Christmas Carol" that goes so far off the rails of the original they might as well just do whatever...

Still I am telling no one would bat an eyelid if this cast were 99.9% white.

There were black and mixed-race folks living in Victorian London. It's not outside the pale to include them.

R13 Of course it's not outside the pale, the only people who'll have a problem with it are the elderly racists. Nobody else really cares about the race of the characters since it isn't integral to the plot.

R14 did you even watch the trailer?

r13 Indeed, I recall Shazad Latif playing one on Penny Dreadful. His character came from money but still got racist abuse when walking the streets of London. "This ain't Calcutta, n****r!" I believe were the exact words. Shocked me because you don't see racism from that time period depicted that often. However, the more shocking part was just how used he was to it; he didn't even react. Man, I can't wait for that show to come back – 1938 Los Angeles should be just as revealing when it comes to race stuff.

Agree R16 Penny Dreadful was excellent.

R10, orks for me. Among my friends I generally refer to Easter as The Festival of the Zombie Christ, or Day of the Undead Deity.

I started watching this. It's very Steven Moffaty. It seems to be going in fun and original directions, then starts trying way too hard to be edgy, and not in original ways. Some Patrick Melrose here, a bit of Amadeus there. And killing the same mouse twice in five minutes. Just no.

Ebeneezer Scrooge Vampire Slayer. Bump.

It’s having its premiere on BBC1 in the UK now. I’m not liking the way they’re fucking with it. Guy Pearce is doing a decent job. In this adaptation Scrooge obviously suffers from OCD.

i thought the childhood sex abuse angle was interesting. The one big thing missing was the story of the girl he loved and abandoned for success when he was young. I didn't really care for this and it left too much unresolved at the end which other version wrap up.

It did get me wondering about race in Victorian England and how many mixed race relationships there were. Shows like Call the Midwife make it seem like blacks didn't start arriving til after WWII.

They didn’t, for the most part. Shit like A Christmas Carol is just doing PC casting as a form of self-congratulations.

I thought it was excellent.

r22, England has had links to Africa dating back to the Roman empire and was very active in the African slave trade during its own colonial phase, so there were certainly people of African ancestry in Victorian England, especially among the lower classes.

[quote] The one big thing missing was the story of the girl he loved and abandoned for success when he was young.

The spirit did show him the kids he would have had, that was the same plot line wasn't it?

I didn't enjoy it as much as r24 did, but I loved the moody, spooky atmosphere created by the director.

Loved the sets, costumes and Guy Pearce's underplayed approach to Ebenezer Scrooge.

The last episode was a total and utter trainwreck. Did we really need to see Mrs. Cratchitt’s bare buttocks?

Are Asian actors ever paired, as in a romantic couple, with Black actors? Or with Hispanic actors?

Ugh I hate colorblind casting so much. Blacks are desperate to be part of western culture. But I kinda understand, they have nothing. Africa is a shithole.

Art direction was just spectacular (truly hats off to everyone involved!), but I had to watch the whole thing in three sittings as it was a bit of a slog. I didn't think Scrooge's growth was organic enough or all that believable - he just suddenly "got" it - and so the ending felt unearned to me. The show was very atmospheric, though, and so I think I shall return to it next year as well. My favourite part? Tiny Tim's drowning projected onto the ceiling of Scrooge's office. Very innovative.

Did anyone else think the disabled actor playing Tiny Tim was kinda amazing? Not a false note in his performance. He's only 10, yet blows so many other child actors out of the water.

Oh, and I thought Charlotte Riley stole every scene she was in. Had no idea she's Tom Hardy's wife! I want to see more of her now.

[quote]Did anyone else think the disabled actor playing Tiny Tim was kinda amazing? Not a false note in his performance.

He was really great. More than held his own against the older actors.

The trailer looks preposterous and Ridley Scott can crank out some real stinkers.

Since the critics are not being kind, I'ma have to PASS.

I really like this comment someone made under TheGuardian's (5-star) review.

[quote]Scrooge is no longer a stereotypical miser, but a thinking voice of reason and science to come. The Bible does not mention the 25th of December and indeed how many of those “Merry Christmases” are meant? Hints of an obsessive compulsive disorder and deep unhappiness. But he still throws that rug over those horses and there’s still hope. It’s dark and violent with hints of very black humour (Marley’s broken jaw...).

And you know what? As someone who no longer celebrates Christmas, I found myself agreeing with Scrooge when he was saying those things about this particular holiday. If you want to be a good person, you should exhibit the spirit of Christmas all year long, not just on that one day. And in the vein of l'ennemi de mon ennemi est mon ami, I enjoyed the pagan spin of the woman summoning those spirits, with the power to do so springing from her trauma of being degraded for Scrooge's amusement. This is the fresh, delicious stuff right there.

Bob Cratchit has a black wife, Yeah sure.

Inter racial marriages were all the rage during Dicken’s time.

[quote] Bob Cratchit has a black wife, Yeah sure. Inter racial marriages were all the rage during Dicken’s time.

Someone being visited by ghosts is super realistic, right?

Christmas spirits visiting you to turn you into a better person was also all the rage during Dickens' time, right? 🙄

But r36 has a bit of a valid point: what concerns me is that young people could watch these “colorblind” historical productions put out on British entertainment and think that’s how minorities were treated back in day, no big deal. We bitch about historical inaccuracies in movies and TV all the time: should this be the exception? And why not just make movies about real minorities from that time: Harriet demonstrated success is possible with such stories. I’ve mentioned it before, but I would love to see a movie based on The Black Count, the biography of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who grew from a slave to be a General under Napoleon (and fathered the novelist Alexandre Dumas).

Not every show needs to be about how minorities are/were treated. The focus here was on Scrooge becoming a better person, that's it. Young people won't be confused by this - if anything, the benefits of young POC seeing themselves in these stories outweigh the potential downsides.

If you want to make a show specifically about the life of minorities back then, make it and I'll watch it.

Why do young POC have to see themselves in these stories? This story was written by a white man living in Victorian England. POC didn’t really register in his daily life .

Do white children need to see themselves in African folklore?

It just takes you out of the story. Mary , Queen of Scots was another movie that did this colorblind casting and having an Asian lady in waiting was distracting as was the prominent black man in the Queen’s court.

Although I will say the most recent Les Miserable with Chiwetel Ejiofor was very good and he didn’t distract from the story as it’s more plausible for a black man having that role in society back then .

The BBC's obsession with colorblind casting is pure pandering. Remember the black Guinevere in that Merlin series?

It's really dark. And so long. I found myself falling asleep in parts of it.

I really enjoyed it.

I've come around on color blind casting in TV and movies. It's all just product for 2019 2020 etc so who is looking for verisimilitude. It rarely bothers anyone in theatre so if you just shift your brain a bit, its fine.

My husband shut it off with the gratuitous baring of Mrs Cratchit’s buttocks. “I don’t need Game of Thrones Scrooge,” said he. I agreed. They go & cast a POC as Mrs Cratchit & can’t resist exploiting her.

I think live theater allows for a bit more suspension of disbelief than does a film that is trying to faithfully recreate a specific time period. I recently saw the National Theatre Live in Cinemas production of Present Laughter with Andrew Scott -- this version of the Noel Coward play was set in the original time period (the 1930s/1940s) but featured a black actor as a theatrical producer and a South Asian actress as the previous wife, and I was totally with it. Of course, it also swapped the sex of the person Scott fools around with, giving it a gay angle, so it was a revisionist version all around.

R41, in Mary, Queen of Scots there were also black villagers in a rural area in Scotland. In the 16th century. Absolutely ridiculous.

What IS ridiculous about the stunt casting in UK is the articles claiming that Blacks and other dark ethnicities were CERTAINLY present in such and such a place. Cue: the Moors, etc. Either you have the switch in your brain to let stunt casting pass, in entertainments, or you don't.

[quote]Why do young POC have to see themselves in these stories?

Because they're an integral part of modern Britain? At least in large cities. Again, you're getting worked up over black and brown people on TV, just to put this conversation into perspective. There are better things to complain about, truly.

[quote]It just takes you out of the story.

I don't know where you live, but I live in a small euro shithole town (haven't seen a black person literally in years), and I hadn't even noticed the cast was mixed until people started complaining about it here. So I don't for the life of me understand how something like this couldn't take someone like me out of the story, yet is somehow a dealbreaker for you. Like, what is your excuse for being so triggered by non-whites in a supernatural horror story? Unless you personally lived during those times, you should have none.

God, this forum is full of negro lovers. Gross.

Black people have absolutely nothing to do with european period pieces. NOTHING. They look pathetic with period european clothes.

Another way to look at it is that Show Business is a business, duh, and subject to diversity hiring guidelines. Certainly in some countries where TV is also linked to obligatory taxes and thus extremely sensitive to diversity hiring. It's just the way it is now, folks.

I won’t go see the stage musical The Boyfriend in London because the lead character Polly, played by Julie Andrews on Broadway and Twiggy in the film, is being played by a black performer. Sorry, it would take me completely out of that world-it’s set in the 1920s. I go to theatre to be transported and color blind casting fucks that up sometimes.

[quote]Again, you're getting worked up over black and brown people on TV, just to put this conversation into perspective. There are better things to complain about, truly.

This is DL.

We complain about EVERYTHING.

R50 , the story isn’t set in modern day Britain.

My point being if it was set in modern day the colorblind casting would work and not just be stunt casting.

It being set in Victorian England, POC shouldn’t expect to see themselves in the story and realize why.

Casting like this is similar to everyone getting a participation trophy.

[quotE] I won’t go see the stage musical The Boyfriend in London because the lead character Polly, played by Julie Andrews on Broadway and Twiggy in the film, is being played by a black performer.

You won’t go see it because you live in Alabama

Fuck you, R57. I’ve lived in NYC all my life and go to London twice a year for work.

I’m guessing you’re lobbing your ignorant barbs from a hovel in New Jersey.

Suuuuure R58