It's not a bad thing when a new version of a famous classic is made from time to time. England's BBC has made a three-part adaptation of A Christmas Carol again after 20 years. This time, the BBC creators dove in with determination and the producers were famous actors. And the lead character of Otter is played by movie star Guy Pearce and the ghost of Christmas past by the even more famous Andy Serkis. The other important actors are already established actors in the UK. At times I have said that I may know them from somewhere. Stephen Graham (Deathstroke, Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge), Joe Alwyn (Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge) and others.
British television cinema is very well known and a lot of quality television adaptations of classic book stories are its domain. And Charles Dickens has many works to adapt, and his A Christmas Carol is the most unfamiliar one he wrote.
This three-part miniseries is very well done. They should just ban creative invention. To begin with, the third major character (the clerk's wife) is played by a black actress (Vinette Robinson). That's not the biggest flaw in the story, though. But the biggest stupidity that the writers have demonstrated is that they brought Alibaba into the story, who is reincarnated as the ghost of last Christmas.
The main characters, the most important ones, i.e. Otterhorn and the ghost of last Christmas are played with great gusto by Guy Pearce and Andy Serkis. Each of their dialogue is a gem, which is the best thing about this story.
The story line is not that good anymore, I was expecting each of the Ghost of Christmas to be given an episode. It didn't. The first half of the first episode introduces us to the main characters, then for two hours we get to explore the past of Otter, the formation of his character and how he went from being an entirely normal child to being a complete miser, cold, callous, curm...
And in the last episode, it's not until the second half that we get to the present, let alone the time of the future Christmas, which is actually supposed to change Shrewdness.
Lest we forget, the writers also blew off the ending of the three-hour psychological profile of Otterhorn by only rewarding the employees with permission to move on to another (more generous) employer. Surely it would have been more interesting if, according to the book, Vydřigroš had bought presents for the whole family and put on a decent Christmas feast.
I haven't had as much opportunity to see other treatments of the same story. I've seen Zemetkis' big movie, of course, but I'm not going to compare it to that one, it was animated and just different. The 20 year old movie with Patrick Stewart might be better, but I haven't seen that one 
and I don't see any Czech TV showing it.
The miniseries has quality acting, it's just that the writers didn't do a great job and managed to come up with a few illogical and bad things within the adaptation that degrade the actors' entire effort.
Original article December 28, 2019 – Kritiky.cz
