A CHRISTMAS CAROL (ITV 2000): CHRISTMAS CAROL-A-THON 2025 BEGINS

If it’s the Friday after Thanksgiving, then regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know it’s the day when I kick off my annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon in which I review several versions of A Christmas Carol. I look at movies, television shows, radio shows and books which adapt the Dickens classic. Every year I present new reviews with a few old classics mixed in since newer readers will have missed them.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2000) – Christmas Carol-A-Thon 2025 begins with a new review. This ITV production from British television which presented the Scrooge figure as a loan shark coincidentally came out the same year as the Brazilian version which featured Scrooge as a drug dealer.

Neither one was a comedy, but this UK adaptation adds lighter moments here and there. A Christmas Carol runs just under 75 minutes and was made by a creative team that genuinely understands the Carol. You can tell not just from their insertion of some of the more obscure lines from the Dickens novel but by the way that even their necessary departures from Dickens to stay true to their loan shark gimmick still perfectly reflect the novel’s themes.

That is especially true of the way they almost seamlessly incorporate “repeating day” elements like in Groundhog Day and Happy Death Day. 

To start this review, let’s look at how the production handles the major characters:

ROSS KEMP stars as London loan shark Eddie Scrooge. Kemp’s resemblance to Michael Chiklis gives this telefilm the feel of A Very Special Commish Christmas. Kemp as Scrooge is a bit ruthless but we’re told he’s never committed murder, which at least puts him one up on the Brazilian drug dealer Scrooge.

Eddie may be stingy and merciless, but he demonstrates the snarky wry wit of all the best Scrooge figures.   

RAY FEARON portrays the ghost of Jacob Marley, our loan shark’s late partner in crime. Fearon serves Double Duty as both Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Present. Rather than see Jacob’s face in a door knocker, Scrooge sees an old Wanted poster of Marley on which the face becomes animate and says Eddie’s name.

The ghost’s warning about Scrooge’s three visitors comes early on, but many of Marley’s other lines are scattered throughout the appearances he makes as a figurative bumper in between the other ghostly visitations.

MICHAEL MALONEY is Bob Cratchit, an accountant who has become a virtual indentured servant to Scrooge due to all the money he owes the loan shark thanks to his own gambling weakness.

Maloney pulls off the rare Bob Cratchit performance which makes the character meek but not contemptibly so.

DANIEL AINSLEIGH plays Scrooge’s nephew, here named Dave instead of Fred. Not only is Nephew Dave a Christmas booster, but he’s also a cop, adding further seasoning to his uncle’s mean-spirited treatment of him. The nephew’s Christmas dinner invitation to Scrooge stays the same as does the latter’s sharp rejection of it.

WARREN MITCHELL appears as Scrooge’s father, who serves as Eddie’s Ghost of Christmas Past. Through him we see Scrooge’s poverty-stricken childhood in which his and his sister’s father all but abandons them, resulting in the child Eddie turning to thievery just to keep himself and his sister alive. From there, he drifted into other crimes on his way to loan sharking. 

ANGELINE BALL portrays Bella, this Carol‘s version of Scrooge’s lost love Belle. She’s a nurse who broke up with Eddie at Christmastime one year because of his refusal to give up his lucrative criminal career. This production makes it so that she and Eddie still encounter each other from time to time with her rejecting him each time because of his ruthless loan sharking.

BEN TIBBER is Tiny Tim, whose scenes all take place in his hospital room, emphasizing his seemingly losing battle to stay alive. Not many lines for Tim in this, not even a variation of “God bless us, every one!” 

KARYS WARNER plays Mrs. Cratchit. She and Tiny Tim are the only Cratchits to have any real dialogue this time around. She’s Mrs. C’s usual feisty and Scrooge-resenting self, with the added factor of threatening to leave Bob if he doesn’t stop working for a criminal.

STEFAN WECLAWEK and JOANNE MCINTOSH are Ignorance and Want. This Carol very effectively incorporates them first as two homeless children that Scrooge is always harsh with before having them show up as Christmas Present’s gaunt companions Ignorance and Want after they freeze to death in the street one night.

SHEZWAE POWELL plays Marley’s mother, who is also a Charity Collector via her group of Salvation Army Carolers. She has always blamed Scrooge for her son’s life of crime which ended by getting shot to death by a rival gangster.

CHLOE HOWMAN is the wife of Nephew Dave. She doesn’t have much screen time, but she’s true to the character’s flippant irreverence toward Uncle Scrooge.  

CLAUDIE BLAKLEY, BILL THOMAS, LIZ SMITH and CHARLES SIMON all play other debtors to the loan shark Scrooge. Their stories are unique to this version of A Christmas Carol.

There’s a clever and very special twist regarding the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (here called the Ghost of Christmas Future). I won’t spoil it for new viewers by saying anything more about the Ghost’s identity but the transition to the future is accomplished by Scrooge’s car aging into a broken-down shell.   

The aforementioned addition of repeating day elements could have gone seriously wrong in other hands, but director Catherine Morshead pulls it off very well, making it mesh nicely with the template of the Dickens story.

Scrooge’s familiar redemption comes about in expected but entertaining fashion.

ITV’s A Christmas Carol stands out among the many versions which set the story in modern times. It may not be an every Christmas watch, but it earned its way into a periodic spot for me. 

FOR DOZENS MORE VERSIONS OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL CLICK HERE:  https://glitternight.com/category/a-christmas-carol-2/