Picture from Wikipedia

Okay so now it is okay to mention Christmas as it is the first of December, just don't mention it to me and we'll be fine. 

Continuing with my obsession I watched another adaptation of A Christmas Carol today, one which I actually bought on DVD early this year and have had to wait until now to watch. I bought it for two pounds in Fopp in January and I simply can't watch Christmassy things during the year, one of the worst things in the world is sitting down to an episode of The Simpsons during the summer and finding out that it's a Christmas show. 

Ebenezer is a 1998 TV movie in which the story has been moved from Victorian London to the Wild West and stars Jack Palance as Scrooge. This Scrooge is a saloon owner with a sideline as a cheating card player who fleeces money out of people without a care in the world. He beats someone on Christmas Eve and gives him a day to clear out and leave his farm which is now his and is challenged to a shoot out on Christmas morning. There's a plot device in which the farmhand's eyesight lets him down and people keep telling him to get glasses, which comes in handy as Ebenezer (after the customary visit in the night from the three ghosts) deliberately loses allowing himself to be shot at knowing he will miss. 

It isn't particularly Christmassy apart from the mentions of Christmas Eve as if to remind the viewer that they're watching a Christmas movie, but as an adaptation it is interesting to watch as the writers have had to effectively start again. There aren't a lot of truly alternative versions of the story, there's a few modern day adaptations (Scrooged being the best of the bunch closely followed by Ross Kemp's version in 2000) that I can think of and it got me to wondering what other directions it could go in. There is a book in which the story is intertwined with a zombie invasion and I have seen a TV film on one of those Christmas movie channels in which a female publishing boss is the main character called It's Christmas, Carol (see what they did there?) but these are few and far between. 

Please read the December newsletter.

The Sunday Alternative Podcast #66 is available from here.

This week's edition of The Random Saturday Sessions with Gerry Trimble is available from here.