“Mr. Sood” (Kunal Nayyar) is a wealthy but curmudgeonly British-Indian (via Uganda) businessman who, on Christmas Eve, sacks most of his staff for having an impromptu party before heading to his luxury home brimming with a spirit of bah-humbug - or the vegetarian, Hindu, equivalent. Meantime, his loyal clerk “Cratchit” (Leo Suter) returns to his own large family, a past it’s sell-by-date chicken and the ailing “Tiny Tim”. Loathing the carol singers who couldn’t, admittedly, carry a tune in a bucket, and expecting his long-suffering housekeeper to turn up on the big day, “Sood” is surprisingly unnerved by the briefest of appearances from his long dead business partner “Marley” (Hugh Bonneville) who portends three more ghostly/ghastly apparitions who are to, perhaps, offer him some hope of redemption in a sort of “what’s past is prologue” sort of fashion. Yep, this is a cannibalisation of the timeless Dickens story and it’s a worthy successor to the recent spate of half-baked British seasonal mediocrities that mix sentiment with contrived attempts at humour. This goes one step beyond that, though, as it attempts to bring a multicultural approach to the proceedings. The songs are multi-lingual, the stereotypes are multi-national and Danny Dyer’s cabbie just renders the whole thing little better than an icing-topped edition of the BBCs “EastEnders” soap in brightly coloured jumpers. There are a few potent asides from “Sood” as he points out the commercialities and dwindling religiosity of Christmas but the rest of this is pantomime standard, complete with set-piece dance routines and politically correct references that even wish happy Christmas to the NHS! Whilst Billy Porter probably steals the show with his enthusiastic spectre and Boy George still has an instantly recognisable and engaging singing voice, Nayyar and Suter are both pretty terrible and deliver a script and some lyrics that you might have found in last year’s crackers. At almost two hours long, it labours any originality it ever had and after about twenty minutes it just made want to come home and watch Albert Finney or Alistair Sim do it properly. If there’s a box to be ticked, then this has a go and it’s that very strained determination to be “inclusive” that makes this pretty cringeworthy, entirely forgettable and not really anything to do with Christmas itself. Charles Dickens already did the heavy lifting with a potent story that tugs at heart strings; this one settles more for the strings on Suter’s guitar and I’m sorry, but it’s just disappointing.
