One of the most acclaimed poets of his day, Dylan Thomas has largely fallen into obscurity in the 71 years since his tragically early death at the age of 39. Today, he is mostly remembered for two things: his poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", or more specifically, two lines from the poem-the titular line and "rage, rage against the dying of the light", and his prose reminisce A Child's Christmas in Wales. Thomas wrote the work, a rather short story in which an unnamed narrator describes the Christmas of his childhood to an unnamed boy, off and on throughout the 1940s, with various versions appearing in magazines before Thomas himself recorded the story in 1952, a year before his death.
There have been at least four adaptions of the story for television. The first version, made for BBC in the mid-1960s (IMDB says 1966, the BBC says 1965), by some miracle still seems to exist, despite being from an era where nearly all programming had their master tapes erased and reused, but sadly does not appear to be online in full anywhere, though the BBC's website has a 2-minute clip available. Luckily, three more recent versions, 1987's live-action A Child's Christmas in Wales, 2008's live action/animated A Child's Christmas, and 2009's live-action A Child's Christmases in Wales, which can best be described as "inspired" by Thomas's work rather than a straight adaption, are readily available if you know where to look.
The 1987 version was a co-production of Britain, Canada, and the United States, and seemed to be designed to be a Christmas season staple on various PBS stations. When Thomas wrote the story, he was describing events that were only about 20 years old at that point. By 1987, anyone who remembered that era would be old enough to be a grandfather, so the wraparound segments present Thomas's story as being told on Christmas Eve by an elderly man to his young grandson. The grandfather was played by Denholm Elliott, best known to modern viewers as Indy's friend Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which would be released a year and a half after this originally aired. In 1987, Elliott was coming off of what would be his only career Oscar nomination for A Room With a View.
The production is very handsome, with a very good performance from Elliott. The 1920-set sequences look great, with terrific costuming and set design. The problem here is that the program runs 54 minutes, designed for an hour-long timeslot, and quite frankly, there isn't enough in Thomas's story to justify that long of a runtime. Indeed, the whole thing ends up rather inert and dull. It is definitely worth a watch, but there is a reason it didn't end up a holiday season staple.
21 years later, another adaption, this one at roughly half the length and half the title, would debut on Welsh TV. A Child's Christmas takes many of its cues from the 1987 special. It also frames the story as a modern-day grandfather talking to his young grandson, and even ends on a similar note, with the grandfather opening the window in the sleeping boy's room to see the snow which was just beginning to fall. What makes this one different is that, while the modern scenes are live action, the grandfather's memories are animated, or, to be more precise, the boy's interpretation of the grandfather's memories are animated, with the clever touch of the boy (in his modern day coat) inserting himself in the middle of his grandfather's adventures. The animation also allows this production to be more fanciful, taking, for example, a brief mention of hippos and spinning an entire underseas adventure out of it, which needless to say does not appear in Thomas's text. The animation is bright and colorful and at times almost Disneyesque.
Despite being only from 2008, there is rather limited amounts of information on the production of this. It was apparently originally made and broadcast in Welsh, though the version I saw was in English. Voicing the grandfather's memories was decidedly not-old Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, who at the time was starring in the American family drama Brothers and Sisters. The actor playing the grandfather in the live-action segments (who looks vaguely like Anthony Hopkins, who is also Welsh) goes unbilled. It's a fun little adaption, and I'm sorry it isn't more widely known.
A year later came A Child's Christmases in Wales, which despite its title, isn't actually an adaption of Thomas's story, but more of an updating. This one is narrated by Michael Sheen, who is looking back on three childhood (or more accurately, tween and teenhood) Christmases in the 1980s. Every holiday, the house of young Owen, who lives with his parents, is invaded by his father's brothers: the rich, pompous Hew, who brings along his rather quiet son Maurice, who is Owen's age, and the chronically unemployed, ne'er-do-well Gorwel. There are a number of running gags over the three Christmases depicted--1983, 1986, and 1989--including Owen's mom obsessively cleaning the bathroom, his dad dismissively describing the classic movie he's watching on TV, the annual battle with the local caroling troupe, who demand to be paid for services rendered, and Gorwel running to the front door in his tighty-whities to see if it snowed overnight.
It's a fun, if rather inconsequential hour, written by comedian Mark Watson. Probably the best-known cast member is Ruth Jones, who co-starred in the British sitcom Gavin and Stacey.
The major problem with adapting A Child's Christmas in Wales is that it is so slight. It is a good story, but it is also a very short story, so it is not surprising that the two straight adaptions of the work had to resort to quite a bit of filler to pad out the running time. Probably the best way to enjoy the work, other than reading it, is to listen to Thomas's audio recording. With all due respect to A Child's Christmas in Wales, A Child's Christmas, and A Child's Christmases in Wales, that remains the definitive performance of the piece.
Next time: Christmas has come and gone, and so has this column for 2024. I'll be back on November 30 for year 12 of A MarkInTexas Made-For-TV Christmas.
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