Balladeer’s Blog’s Sixteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues with this review of a VERY underappreciated adaptation of the Dickens classic.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL: A GHOST STORY (2022) – Let me state right at the beginning that this version of the Carol has jumped into my Top 10 favorites, yet astonishingly as of this writing there are NO user or critic reviews of the production at IMDb.
This presentation joins the many filmed stage performances of A Christmas Carol but towers over most of them. The iconic Mark Gatiss wrote the adaptation and Adam Penford directed.
To encourage as many people as possible to watch this Carol I will emphasis just once, here at the beginning, that this production truly has nearly universal appeal. I repeat, below will be the only time I cover this aspect of the work in my review, but it’s necessary here in 2025. Continue reading
My late mother was, unfortunately for me when I was a teenager, a country music fan so, strange as it may seem, I actually know who the singers in this flick are. This version of the Carol is set in fictional Flint City, Tennessee, a town dominated by the financial pull of banker Cyrus Flint, played by Hoyt Axton.
A REDNECK CHRISTMAS CAROL (1997) – Written by John Yow & T. Stacy Helton and illustrated by David Boyd this is a reasonably funny adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Think of the type of jokes that Jeff Foxworthy was telling back when this book came out and you’ll know what to expect. 
A DIVA’S CHRISTMAS CAROL (2000) – Balladeer’s Blog’s Sixteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues with a look at this Vanessa Williams venture. Due to the nature of this adaptation of the Dickens classic it is often categorized as one of the “African-American versions.” Among other such Carols I have reviewed are Christmas is Comin’ Uptown with Gregory Hines and John Grin’s Christmas starring Robert Guillaume. 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2012) – This adaptation of A Christmas Carol was a noble effort to try something different that was not just a gimmick. Ignore the negative IMDb reviews which accuse this adaptation of using “Elizabethan language.” They’re off by a few hundred years, since in reality the dialogue follows that in the Dickens novel of 1843. 
IT’S CHRISTMAS, CAROL! (2012) – Well, to borrow from another holiday, I hold these truths to be self-evident – 
All that said, I won’t be able to use my usual format for my reviews of A Christmas Carol since Marley and the Christmas Ghosts are all played by one person. And it’s not a case of a comedian or a chameleon-like thespian so skilled at crafting characters that it’s a showcase for their talents. (Picture Robin Williams doing different personae for the Ghosts, for instance.)
A CHRISTIAN CAROL (2016) – Balladeer’s Blog’s 16th Annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon continues with this look at a religious-themed variation of A Christmas Carol. Directed by Stan Severance and written by Wesley T Highlander, A Christian Carol follows in the footsteps of the 1983 production The Gospel According to Scrooge.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2019) – Directed and co-written by Steven Salgado, this adaptation of the 1843 novel sets the story in present-day Miami. Though some may try to pigeon-hole this indy film as “a Hispanic-American Christmas Carol” that would not be quite accurate. 
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. 
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