Review at a glance

By now you may have realised that your usual Christmas Carol Correspondent is away, and so it falls to me to review London’s 2025 Dickens double bill.

Unlike my erstwhile colleague, I rather rate Dickens’ literary output (while condemning his attitude to women) but have a general suspicion of Mark Gatiss: his collaborations with Steven Moffat , which saw the pair commit crimes of adaptation against Sherlock and Dracula, appears to have imbued both with an overconfidence in their own cleverness and a love of a limp last-minute plot twist.

Nevertheless, a few years after Jack Thorne revived A Christmas Carol for the Old Vic, fellow screenwriter Gatiss took a stab at making it a more grim and spooky affair .

It’s now back for a third run at Alexandra Palace

See Full Page