Imaginative, Gender-Switching Twist in USA’s ‘Ms. Scrooge’

Funny how you can hear some stories again and again, yet be moved anew each time.

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is one such tale. It shows up yearly in theaters and on the big and small screens--and audiences never seem to tire of it. To these many versions, the USA cable network adds an imaginative new one: the gender-switched “Ms. Scrooge,” which reunites Cicely Tyson with John Korty, her director 23 years ago on the legendary “Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” It debuts tonight at 9.

The movie begins on the snowy streets of present-day Providence, R.I., where a youth spies a quarter shining in the slush and stoops to pick it up. Just as he’s about to curl his fingers around the prize, a foot stomps on it, claiming it. The boy looks up into the stern face of Ebenita Scrooge (Tyson), then flees in terror. Ebenita cackles as she calls after him, “You’ll never make it that way, kid.”

Ebenita knows how to “make it” in the world--or, at least, she thinks she does. She’s a loan shark who overcharges clients and underpays her employees, as well as a landlord who thinks nothing of evicting tenants on Christmas Eve. Her whole body is bound up in the effort of pinching pennies: Her lips are drawn into a sour pucker and her eyes are perpetually narrowed in distrust. The only time a whisper of a smile crosses her face is when she’s alone in her safe, locking stacks of bills into a strongbox.

John McGreevey’s script urgently and intelligently updates Dickens’ tale. In Ebenita’s trip back in time with the Ghost of Christmas Past, she revisits a racially sparked childhood tragedy. Employee Bob Cratchit (John Bourgeois) entreats her for a company health plan in part because his young son, Tim (cute-as-a-button William Greenblatt), is failing from a slow-growing congenital tumor. And on Christmas Day, the streets are set up with soup lines for the homeless.

There is much humor, too, as when the cobweb-covered Ghost of Christmas Past--referred to here as Spirit Past--emerges from a safe in Ebenita’s vault. The notorious skinflint narrows her eyes even more suspiciously than usual as she asks: “Are you from the IRS?”

Generosity--and with it, happiness--truly seems to blossom in Tyson as she makes Ebenita’s journey. Raeven Larrymore-Kelly and Karen Glave provide poignant assistance at key moments, playing Ebenita as a child and at 25. And Katherine Helmond (“Soap” and, yes, “Jane Pittman”) gets to go deliciously over the top, as she is so good at doing, as Maude Marley--who taught Ebenita everything she knows and is now desperately trying to unteach it.

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* “Ms. Scrooge” airs at 9 tonight on the USA Network. The cable channel has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).