Is A Muppet Christmas Carol still the best adaptation of Charles Dickens’ popular Christmas novella? Or will the new BBC/FX adaptation take its place?

I cannot keep this charade up for long. It won’t. This latest of many adaptations of A Christmas Carol, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, leans heavily into the ghost story elements of this classic Christmas tale. The number one goal of this adaptation is to be as dark as humanly possible. The second goal is to be as long as humanly possible. I believe we were almost an hour into the movie before we even meet any of the ghosts.

Because of this, I would honestly consider this film a retelling rather than an adaptation. To add length and grit and darkness, this version reimagines many of the major plot points of the story. There’s a whole back story for Jacob Marley’s ghost and his motivations, which is something NO ONE ASKED FOR EVER. There’s a subplot for Martha Cratchit, which is… fine, I guess. Scrooge’s backstory is fleshed out a lot more. For instance, did you know he’s a One Thousand and One Nights fanboy? Well. He is now.

Anyway, let’s just run this thing through the handy dandy Christmas movie scoring system and be done with it.