When it comes to literary adaptations, this year the supernatural has exerted its grip. On BBC1 we will be revisited by the best known ghosts in all literature with a new A Christmas Carol, adapted by Steven Knight, creator of Peaky Blinders. Starring Guy Pearce as Scrooge, this Carol unfolds over the three days before Christmas, and will be far removed from the Muppets or CBeebies versions: it is the darkness and fear that viewers will be getting.
Immediately after Christmas, we are offered a new version of another much adapted classic, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, also showing over three consecutive nights, from New Year’s Day. It has been adapted by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the creators of Sherlock. Will they, unlike previous adaptors, find some televisual equivalent for Stoker’s brilliant, disconcerting patchwork of narratives (diaries, letters, newspaper reports – even a phonographic recording)?
Mark Gatiss has also adapted an MR James ghost story to be shown on BBC4 on Christmas Eve. In the original short story, Martin’s Close, James’s narrator is puzzled by a piece of enclosed yet overgrown land in a West Country village. His research sends him back to a murder trial in the 17th century before the infamous hanging judge, Judge Jeffreys. George Martin is accused of killing a young woman who was obsessed with him, yet she has been seen after he is supposed to have killed her. Peter Capaldi stars as Martin’s perplexed defence lawyer, slowly realising that there are some things worse than death.
Channel 5 is showing a dramatisation of Susan Hill’s novella The Small Hand, a two-hour drama on Boxing Day. While featuring some settings that would tempt any TV producer – a spookily abandoned country house with its overgrown garden, an isolated French monastery – the text presents some challenges. It will be intriguing to see how the adapters translate the chilling subjectivity of this first-person narrative. The story is told by a book dealer called Adam Snow, played by Douglas Henshall, whose supernatural experiences are mostly feelings and impressions. One key moment occurs in the narrator’s mind while he is sitting in a traffic jam.
The ghost-free adaptations are mostly aimed at children. Worzel Gummidge, the animated scarecrow who first walked and talked in a series of novels by Barbara Euphan Todd, returns to our screens, perhaps stirring the memories of parents who watched the TV version starring Jon Pertwee that aired from 1979. This is clearly a labour of love by Mackenzie Crook, who has written and directed the two hour-long films, as well as taking the title role. The publicity tells us that it now has an “environmental message”, with which Todd, a lover of the English countryside, might well have been happy.
Owen Sheers’s TV adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s Mimi and the Mountain Dragon seems seasonally appropriate. It is based on the author’s observation of a Swiss mountain tradition, where children parade in red hats to frighten off any wicked spirits. The BBC will show an animated version with a score by Rachel Portman performed by the BBC Philharmonic orchestra. After lunch on Christmas Day itself, conscientious or desperate parents will be able to settle down with smaller children to watch an adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s narrative-in-rhyme The Snail and the Whale, illustrated by Axel Scheffler. The snail gets to see the world by hitching a ride with a friendly whale. The whale is huge and powerful, but the snail will save the day. It will be the latest in a sequence of adaptations of children’s books by this pair, which began with The Gruffalo, first shown on Christmas Day 2009. And on Channel 4, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, the classic by Judith Kerr, who died this year, will air on Christmas Eve. David Walliams narrates, with Benedict Cumberbatch, Tamsin Greig and David Oyelowo providing voices, and songs performed by Robbie Williams.
Absences are perhaps worth noting too. No Agatha Christie! A sequence of four inventive, no-expense-spared adaptations by Sarah Phelps began with And Then There Were None, broadcast in 2015. Phelps has been working on a two-part dramatisation of Christie’s The Pale Horse, but sadly we will have to wait a little longer to watch Rufus Sewell playing amateur investigator Mark Easterbrook. In the meantime, there is always Cluedo.
