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The BBC is under fire this morning after a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol was revealed to have omitted several major characters including Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.
Dickens scholars had become concerned about the new, darker, version of the story when trailers did not include any talking rats and entertaining singalong numbers, and their fears were realised with the first episode.
“In 1843 Charles Dickens showed the real tragedy of Ebenezer Scrooge’s lack of humanity through the medium him shouting at a sad animatronic rabbit on his doorstep,” said Professor Sir Simon Williams of the Kettering University department of What the Dickens.
“And Guy Pierce, whilst being a tremendous actor in his own right, simply cannot portray that level of diabolic evil by giving Bob Cratchit four lumps of coal.”
Fans of the original text took to the Internet in uproar after it emerged that Mrs Cratchit bore no resemblance to Miss Piggy, and Bob Cratchit himself was not a clumsy, dancing puppet frog with a jaunty line in musical numbers with passers-by.
“I appreciate they’ve departed from the norm by getting Andy Serkis to play the Ghost of Christmas Past, but I can’t help but feel that if they’ve made any changes to the iconic scene of Mister Fozziewig’s party and his singing bunches of grapes in the next episode they’ll have gone too far.”
