FX's A Christmas Carol

A darkly magical realist re–telling that definitely isn't for kids

If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

• Charles Dickens; A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843)

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.

• A Christmas Carol

Frank Cross: I get it. You're taking me back in time to show me my mother and father, and I'm supposed to get all goosey and blubbery. Well, forget it, pal, you got the wrong guy.

Ghost of Christmas Past: That's exactly what Attila the Hun said. But when he saw his mother...Niagara Falls!

• Scrooged (Wri. Mitch Glazer, Michael O'Donoghue; 1988)

Written by Steven Knight (Amazing Grace; Eastern Promises; Locke; and co-creator of Peaky Blinders and Taboo), directed by Nick Murphy (The Awakening; Blood; The Secret), and with Ridley Scott and Tom Hardy counted amongst the executive producers, this latest adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (which aired on the BBC in the UK and Ireland as three one-hour episodes over three nights, and on FX in North America as a three-hour film) was heavily advertised as the "darkest" version of A Christmas Carol ever made, definitely not for kids, and with a Scrooge for our bitter and jaded times. Very much eschewing the sweetness and levity of previous adaptations, the show takes itself very seriously (perhaps too much so), interrogating not just such standard fare as the exploitative nature of capitalism and the illogicality of certain Christmas traditions, but actually deconstructing the thematic foundations of the novella itself (especially the dénouement). It defini...

Nudity, the f-word, witches, child molestation, public urination, grave desiccation, hatred, prostitution, and it all ends on a nice note of spite... and I guess those changes were added in to make it politically correct?

I guess the old milktoast ghost story about redemption wasn't politically correct enough, so adding in the f-word, witches, child molestation, and prostitution... all somehow made it more politically correct.

In this version women all have magic powers, because women, and can use them to spite people, and it all ends on the uplifting note that there are more men to smite.

So, I guess the old version about redemption was somehow politically incorrect, so they had to change the ending to give spite the last word over redemption?

Ultimately, it's already a ghost story, there are certainly ways to make it darker and still keep it a Christmas story about redemption. I guess somewhere along the lines it went darker and replaced redemption with spite, and something tells me that the new message resonates much stronger with it's target audience than the concept of redemption ever could.