A cold-hearted entrepreneur of Christmas tat is visited by the ghosts of Christmases past, present and yet to come.

Just when you thought that surely – surely! – Dickens’s classic has been picked to its sorry narrative wishbone, and there was nothing but thin gruel to be boiled from the remaining carcass, along comes Sky Max’s Christmas Carole and it turns out to be a rather tasty festive treat.

My hopes weren’t high, but writers Richard Pinto and Anil Gupta have found a decent new angle. Scrooge is now Carole, played with cool, but emotional authority by Suranne Jones, and she’s a multi-millionaire specializing in the sort of superfluous Christmas rubbish that costs 10p to make, retails for a tenner, and falls apart after five minutes. It’s Christmas Eve, and Carole’s about to sell her company to Limpopo (an evil American e-commerce behemoth, that bears no relationship whatsoever to any other companies you might think of named after large rivers) with no regard for the consequences to her employees – especially her long suffering assistant Bobbie (Taj Atwal) – all of whom are doomed to lose their jobs.

I would say, ‘you know the rest’, however there are some lovely re-boots of the original story, about which I won’t say too much because it would spoil the fun. However, it has been well publicised that the Spirit of Christmas Past appears in the form of not one, but two ghosts, namely Morecambe and Wise – the ultimate manifestation of a British Christmas round the telly, who, back in the day, could attract an audience of 28 million for their Xmas specials. This is a pretty bold move by Gupta and Pinto, as it relies on a perfectly pitched recreation of some the UK’s most treasured national memories. Luckily Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel do a superb job as Eric and Ernie, and there are some delicious call-backs to our favourite Morecambe and Wise moments.

Whether the other ghostly re-imaginings work quite so well might be up for debate, but it matters less, because the development of Carole’s story is a satisfyingly rich deviation from that endured by Dickens’s Scrooge. For those of us who suffered a family loss this year, or know the pain of family schisms, it touches on something truthful and worth saying, even if you can see the moving parts at times.

Respect to director Ian Fitzgibbon for some lovely visual segues, keeping the whole thing rolling on at a good pace, and best of all saving us from sentimentality or sermonising.

Verdict: I nearly gave Christmas Carole a miss, so if you haven’t caught it yet, or are perhaps a bit doubtful, put your prejudices to one side, grab a turkey sandwich and settle down for some well-crafted, enjoyable and deceptively substantial Christmas entertainment. 8/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com