What The Dickens?

SOMETIMES THE SNOW COMES DOWN IN JUNE, AS SFX DISCOVERS ON THE SET OF A VERY DIFFERENT VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

- Darren Scott

OF ALL THE STRANGE places SFX has been in pursuit of a story, summer at the Dancing On Ice studios probably takes the biscuit. Thankfully it’s another frosty production that brings us out to Bovingdon Airfields – also a location for Rogue One and Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – but one we’re no stranger to.

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol has had many lives since first being published on 19 December 1843. There have been musicals, animations, theatrical stagings, operas, and graphic novels. Doctor Who, the Muppets, and Vanessa Williams as Ebony Scrooge have all taken a turn at the traditional festive tale.

But we’re willing to bet you’ve never seen an adaptation quite like the new three-part BBC/FX version, hitting screens this Christmas. Jaw-dropping from the opening scene, it’s quite the modern take. That’s probably, in part, down to writer and executive producer Steven Knight – the same Mr. Knight responsible for Taboo and Peaky Blinders.

“What I desperately didn’t want to do was go, ‘I’m going to get Dickens and make it really controversial,’” Knight explains. “Because it’s such a vandalism – gratuitous vandalism – of something that people love. I really, really, really didn’t want to do that, and make it horrific or anything, or make it dark. So I think it’s palatable to a family audience.”

We suspect that people might have something to say about that – from the opening seconds of the first episode, it’s clear that this is no Muppet extravaganza.