So far, so normal. But this version of A Christmas Carol is anything but an ordinary retelling of the festive classic. It has been drastically reimagined for the modern age. Eyebrows have already been raised over the opening, which shows a boy urinating on the grave of Jacob Marley, and dialogue littered with expletives, including the F-word. In fact, it is the first major adaptation of the Dickens novella to be screened at the 9pm watershed and considered unsuitable for children.
Even its leading man will come as a shock to many. Guy Pearce has been acting since he was eight, finding fame as the troubled hunk Mike in Neighbours before donning high heels for movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
He has since won plaudits playing everyone from Andy Warhol to King Edward VIII.
But he’s never taken on a role quite as iconic as Scrooge, in the BBC’s showcase Christmas drama.
The British-born Australian actor – his mother is from County Durham – is a bit of a left-field casting for the role, but the show’s creator Steven Knight, the man who made Birmingham gangsters sexy with his Peaky Blinders series, knew from the start he wanted a handsome man still in his prime for the character who is normally depicted as an embittered, frail old man.
“It is exciting but quite nerve-racking,” admits Guy, 52, about playing the man whose very name has become a byword for Christmas misers. “But I immediately loved the idea of it – because it feels very different.”
Guy Pearce with Charlotte Riley in A Christmas Carol 2019 (Image: BBC/Scott Free/FX Networks)
This Scrooge in the three-part series which begins Sunday night on BBC One is a damaged man and he has damaged others in return.
“There is something quite snivelling and twisted about him in the original work but what Steve and our director Nick wanted was somebody far more contemporary in personality,” says Guy.
“Ours is a character who is unappealing in a different way. He is a bullish cocky businessman. He has a lot of swagger and bravado.
“While on the surface he isn’t so obviously damaged, it is only when you drill down and realise he’s had a rough time in his life that you discover people who are bullies have often been bullied before.
“Once we delve into his past, there were scenes of dialogue which, even as I was rehearsing them at home, would make me tear up because they were so touching, so poignant, so painful.
“We utterly crack open the character. The original material is actually quite dark, in a similar way to old fairy tales being quite scary and frightening.
“I think what Steven Knight wanted to do was look at Dickens’s original material and dig in further.”
Guy Pearce is much younger than the Scrooge character is normally portrayed (Image: BBC/Scott Free/FX Networks)
The series has an all-star cast, including Line of Duty’s Stephen Graham who plays Marley, Scrooge’s former business partner, who is key to this series as he can only escape hell if the stubborn Scrooge repents.
It also stars Andy Serkis, Gollum in Lord of the Rings, playing The Ghost of Christmas Past as a vagrant who is able to inhabit other bodies.
Bob Cratchit is played by Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, British actor, Joe Alwyn, while Jason Flemyng is a creepy Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.
The show also features new talent, 10-year-old Lenny Rush who plays Tiny Tim.
Lenny has a rare form of dwarfism which affects his bone growth but he wants viewers to see that “anything is possible if you try hard enough”.
The ghost of Scrooge’s sister, Lottie, played by Peaky Blinders star Charlotte Riley, in the guise of The Ghost of Christmas Present, is the one who affects him the most.
“Having that character, who has just died, really makes it emotional,” says Guy. “So, it becomes more than just a tour of his past and the hope that he will redeem himself. It leaves you wanting him to do better.”
The new BBC adaptation of A Christmas Adaptation has been likened to Peaky Blinders in style (Image: BBC/Scott Free/FX Networks)
Guy, who lost his father, an RAF pilot who died during a test flight, when his son was just eight, believes in ghosts and says he has felt his dad’s presence.
“Occasionally, and particularly now that I am a father, I feel like my own father is present,” he says. “That might just me manufacturing that in my head.
“But I do believe in the spirit world and I believe that energy we have, that inhabits all of us, still exists when we die and it just moves around and reappears in various other forms.
“I’ve only ever felt really haunted just once. Years ago, at home in Melbourne, I
had a gym in the garage in the backyard of my house.
“I had a radio in there and I never changed the channel. I would just switch it on and off when I went to work out. But one day I went in there and it was on a completely different channel.
“No one else had access to that gym and I felt absolutely mystified by it. I am still convinced some spirit did it.”
Guy has previously talked about how acting became his way of dealing with his feelings about his father’s loss – specifically the sense of unpredictability.
“Of course, life contains nothing but unpredictability and so, as a kid, my nerves were jangling constantly,” he said.
“It was hard being around people. I just wanted to close the door on them. But then I went to the theatre with my mum and I was completely awestruck that the actors could have such an effect on the audience and make them think that they were smart and funny. I decided to start doing that myself.
“So instead of being this scared little kid, I acted smart and funny. The more you act a certain way, the more it becomes ingrained in you and you start doing it on a subconscious level. I think acting became a survival technique.”
Stephen Graham plays Jacob Marley (Image: BBC/Scott Free/FX Networks)
He was 18 when he won the part of Mike in Neighbours. The soap turned him, Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan into global stars. The trio were reunited last year for Kylie’s 50th birthday.
Like them, he has always had a musical side, and last year released an album, The Nomad, which spelled out his heartbreak at the end of his 18-year marriage to psychiatrist Kate Mestitz, his childhood sweetheart.
Since then his life has taken quite a turn. After vowing never to have children, he met and fell in love with Game of Thrones actress Carice van Houten, who played Melisandre, in 2016 on the set of film Brimstone. They now have a two-and-a-half-year-old son called Monte.
He has admitted the relationship started off messily with “rebound elements to it” and it was a surprise when she became pregnant but, “we’re both mature enough to go, ‘Let’s go back and start again’.”
Even the way he sees Christmas has changed, admits Guy now. “For a long time, I was a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas. I did think, ‘Why do we bother with this every year?’
“It seems to start earlier and earlier each year. I’ve always had a healthy cynicism about it. But now I’m thinking about cultivating more of a Christmas spirit and bringing it to life with my little boy.
“I have my sister in Australia and we always go there. But the great thing about having Christmas over there is it really feels like a holiday and I do enjoy it.”
Now he’s on a high, having been through such a low, he admits he has a lot of empathy for Scrooge.
“All of us have had pain in our lives and all of us have felt hurt and we’ve also hurt others along the way,” he says. “The pain any of us have experienced in our pasts still exists unless it is worked through and resolved.
“So the idea of a character who is forced to look at what they’ve done to other people, and what’s been done to them, I think means a lot to any of us. And the idea of being able to redeem ourselves is frightening and appealing.
“Life is tough. That is why a story like A Christmas Carol will always be relevant.”
A Christmas Carol starts on BBC One on Sunday at 9pm