A big part of the Christmas season is, for me, watching all the classic holiday Christmas specials. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without Frosty, Rudolph, the Grinch, and all my other holiday TV pals.
One of my favorite specials is the holiday classic, The Year Without a Santa Claus, featuring a memorable appearance by two brothers, Heat Miser and Snow Miser, who apparently have some hand in the current global warming crisis, due to some complicated family issues.
I love these characters so much that I was delighted/dismayed when the ABC Family Channel announced they would premier a new special, A Miser Brothers Christmas, on December 13th (as part of their annual however-many days of showing crappy Christmas movies thing they do every year). I was delighted because I, of course, was happy to see my old pals back, and thrilled that Mickey Rooney was returning as the voice of Santa, and that George S. Irving was reprising his role as Heat Miser. Sadly, Dick Shawn will not be playing Snow Miser again, as he is dead.
What I am less than thrilled with is why corporate suits continue to try to suckle the teat of nostalgic baby-boomers, with terrible results. I hate to judge a program before it airs, but the plot description on ABC’s official press release sounds awful. It seems Santa gets laid up with some injury, Christmas might be canceled, the Misers are called to help out, blah, blah, blah. I’m fairly confident that, at the end of the show, Christmas goes on as planned.
Can’t greedy TV execs leave classic characters alone and create something new? How many times has Bugs Bunny been brought back from the dead to appear in some steaming pile o’ crap?!
I will conclude this post with the promise that if I watch this special and like it (and I must watch), I will write a glowing review of it.
Don’t get your hopes up.
Clacked by Bill White
on Dec 07, 2008 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I absolutely love these characters! Your drawing is awesome and captures them perfectly! Great talent, Bill.
I agree about the commercialism of Christmas and how the networks find a way to ruin our memories of such endearing characters.
I will probably watch the ABC family special just for curiosity sake, but I’m sure I’ll won’t walk away from it with a warm fuzzy feeling and the hope that it gets re-run every Christmas..
Keep up the great work, Bill. I really enjoy your posts.
I think I’ll just stick to the original and skip this one.
I agree that it looks like it’ll suck, primarily, because the claymation classics of the past weren’t afraid to add a bit of realism or sadness i.e. in ‘Jack Frost’ Jack doesn’t get the girl & Frosty dies for 10 sec in the original film. But, bringing back the original voice actors intrigues me. On a side note, isn’t “Santa gets laid up with some injury, Christmas might be canceled, XX are called to help out” a staple of most Christmas shows anyway (or at least the original appearance of Heat & Snow)?
An,
You are correct, the “Santa is out of it so Christmas is cancelled” theme is common on a lot of holiday tales.
I always wondered when watching these specials where Santa got the veto power to put the kibosh on the holiday. I was under the impression that Christmas was centered around someone else.
I love the Miser brothers (and the cool bobbleheads I have of them!), but I don’t think I’ll tune in for this new special! Yikes! On the plus side – has anyone ever heard Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s version of their songs? It totally rocks!
Am I the only one who remembers the creepy live action version of this from a couple years back? Harvey Fierstein as Heat Miser and Michael McKean as Snow Miser? Only lasted about 20 minutes watching that … soooooo horrible. Sigh. Why mess with a classic?
No, Debbie, you are not the only one who remembers it, but I have been trying to forget it.
Actually, that live action version proves my point pretty well.