FX’s “A Christmas Carol”, The Past That Shapes Us, the Present That Breaks Us, the Future That Saves Us – front mezz junkies, Theater News

The Television Series Review: FX’s A Christmas Carol

By Ross

FX’s A Christmas Carol, , the brooding and unsettling 2019 adaptation starring Guy Pearce, remains one of the most daring reinterpretations of Dickens’s tale I’ve seen. After spending last Sunday evening immersed in Three Ships Collective’s gorgeously intimate staging of A Christmas Carol, and later indulging in the beloved comfort of The Muppet Christmas Carol, I felt pulled back to this darker incarnation, drawn by contrast, curiosity, and something like ritual. Rewatching it, I was reminded how fully the series commits to its grim aesthetic; its winter feels carved from soot and shadow, its moral landscape stripped of sentimentality. This is not a story softened for comfort but one thrust into the harsh light of adult realities: violence, trauma, and the corrosive power of cruelty passed from one generation to the next. It’s a portrait of a man shaped—almost sculpted—by damage, and the series refuses to turn away from the darker threads that tie Scrooge to his past.

Pearce (The Brutalist) delivers a stark, riveting Scrooge, a man who treats the human heart like an object for dissection, all mechanism and no mercy. What makes this adaptation so gripping is how thoroughly it examines the psychology beneath that frost. The writing and direction peel back Scrooge’s layers with a forensic patience, exposing the wounds that calcified into misanthropy. One of the series’ most determined forces is Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings) as the Ghost of Christmas Past, a spectral presence who moves with a shape-shifting omniscience. But the show’s greatest discovery lies in its expansion of the Cratchit story, especially through the haunting, mystical arc woven around Mary Cratchit (a dynamic Vinette Robinson). The entire Cratchit clan, especially Joe Alwyn (Hamnet) as Bob Cratchit, matches Pearce’s intensity beat for beat, offering performances grounded in lived-in pain, determination, and quiet rebellion. Their scenes are among the most affecting, rooting the supernatural in the very human cost of Scrooge’s indifference.

The series, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and directed by Nick Murphy (The Awakening), is also a triumph of craft. Its visuals—ashen streets, ghost-lit corridors, candle flames that flicker like warnings—combine with meticulous cinematography and design work to form a world that feels both mythic and brutally real. Every frame has the weight of something carved, chiseled, or dredged from memory. And while I missed the customary visit to Scrooge’s nephew—a moment of warmth and reconnection that this version pointedly withholds—the omission feels deliberate, part of the show’s refusal to chase comfort when the harder truths are still on the table. Even without the familiar notes of familial reconciliation, the series finds a hard, honest version of redemption. Its closing moments don’t burst with joy; they murmur with the fragile beginnings of compassion, earned through storytelling that understands darkness not as spectacle but as a place one must move through to reach the light.