Alex MazereeuwDecember 17, 2023, 5:22 PM
If Home Alone, Die Hard and All You Need Is Love are the ultimate Christmas viewing traditions, then after three (unforgettable) editions, Scrooge Live can now go down as the ultimate warm-up for the Christmas holidays. The formula of this Omroep Max extravaganza has been rock solid for years: retell the famous story of greedy rich man Ebenezer Scrooge with a group of actors, celebrities and The Passion alumni, and have that story told by a jolly speaking puppet who jokes about current events. into the story, and then give it an urgent character by asking for donations for a noble cause (children growing up in poverty).
Especially in the retelling of the classic Scrooge story, Scrooge Live, as a professional amateur theater, often skirts the edges of the discomfort ravine, but it is fun. The third edition also met all expectations: Thomas van Luyn had the time of his life as Scrooge, Henk Poort, as deceased Scrooge ally Marley, seemed lost in a deadly serious opera, and Frank Evenblij was the narrator to provide jokes about current events (‘ That Scrooge is even more fake than Mia and Dion in Liverpool!’).
Jacqueline Blom, Thomas van Luyn and Henk Poort in ‘Scrooge Live’.Image MAX
The Christmas gifts fell early from the NPO tree, and that is not an unnecessary luxury, now that all kinds of Scrooge-like figures are ready to tinker with the public budgets. In recent weeks, everything has been on the scales of anti-NPO populism, and that also leads to the professional viewer increasingly wondering why exactly the public broadcaster is on earth.
Because we have been seeing for almost two weeks now in the daily program Serious Christmas that miser Scrooge does not always have to be wrong. If Scrooge Live is a descendant of The Passion, then Serious Christmas is a descendant of The all-rounder VIPs, the program in which forgotten celebrities have to carry out tasks such as ‘lick the sugar off this lollipop’ or ‘heat frozen underpants with your body heat’. .
The always rebellious boys and girls from PowNed thought: we should do something like that too, and why not with largely the same field of participants as with The All-Kunner VIPs? Think of Wendy van Dijk’s son, reality star Louisa Janssen and of course Maik de Boer (Rob Geus had unfortunately already been killed). On Saturday the participants had to whip whipped cream until it was stiff. Then you will know, because with the word ‘stiff’ creative minds can go in many fun directions.
Now, as an experienced TV viewer, I have had to endure a lot, and I try to cope with it in a cheerfully cynical way even in the portals of hell, but even for me there are limits. Letting a miser like Scrooge loose on the public broadcaster may be a bridge too far, but as long as these completely stupid kindergarten formats continue to slip through the net of genre managers and channel bosses, a little strictness can’t hurt.
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2023-12-17 16:22:45
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