If you watched a fair amount of festive programming, you will be well familiar with the idea that there are not a lot of new ideas under the Christmas storytelling sun.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing; we like our festive tropes and cliches held close and to pop up with comforting frequency and recognisable form, and so there’s a rarely a complaint when a movie or TV special ticks all the usual boxes with, hopefully, a modicum of originality to keep us fully engaged.
What is so lovely about Santa’s Apprentice, a 2010 French- Australian production Written by Alexandre Reverend and directed by Luc Vinciguerra, is that it folds in many of the expected festive elements but with some really audaciously fun, occasionally odd and always highly imaginative originality.
Set at an orphanage in Sydney, Australia, that rather oddly occupies some fairly expensive harbourside land that may or may not be in Manly, Santa’s Apprentice is centred on a pure-of-heart young orphan called Nicholas (Jack Versace in the Australian edition; Nathan Simony in the French) who longs for a family of how own, no more so than when his BFF, Felix (Holly Fraser AU/Valentin Cherbuy FR) is adopted and goes to America to live.
Nicholas dreams of being able to play with all the toys he wants, of being loved and part of a family and of Christmas being as magically wonderful as he dreams it could be.
His wishes are granted, pretty much in full (saving for having Felix close by as a friend), when he, well, effectively kidnapped by Santa’s lead elf Humphrey (Max Cullen), disappeared in the middle of the night in a way that causes great distress to those left behind at the orphanage.
That, it must be said, feels less magical and a little weirdly unsettling than it should.
But Nicholas, who has to convince a reasonably dimwitted Humphrey that the orphanage bully, also named Nicholas (Shardyn Fahey-Leigh) is not Santa’s goodhearted successor – for background, every 158 years or so the incumbent Santa must willingly give up his post and yield to a replacement who’s chosen by an hilariously strange festive illuminati of ex Santas – LOVES his new life, even if Santa seems quite surly and irascible at first.
Santa’s less than jolly countenance is due to the incumbent’s (Shane Jacobson AU/Benoît Allemane FR) unwillingness to give up the gig, even though refusal to do so will result in all the magic of Christmas ending.
That dire outcome doesn’t stop him from being quite selfish at first, and while that might seem a strangely discordant element to toss into a festive story supposed to be all warm and bonhomie, it’s a sign that here is a festive special that’s willing to up the quirk, turbo charge the strangeness and thus offer a wildly original take on the Santa mythos.
Santa’s Apprentice very much reflects an delightfully offbeat French storytelling sensibility that gives us some wild worldbuilding ideas that thrill and delight with their departures from the same old same old North Pole and Christmas ideas, but it is also quite sweetly moving with key characters like Mrs. Claus (Magda Szubanski), Nicholas’s sweet orphanage friend Beatrice Lovejoy (Delta Goodrem) and orphanage director Mrs. Palmer (Georgie Parker) offering some real humanity in the midst of all the hilarious oddities (cue the council of old Santas who are gleefully off-the-charts chaotically fun).
This is a Christmas special with a breathtakingly original take on the Santa mythos which goes all out on the elves, the toys, the reindeer and all the other expected elements – they’re there but not as you know them exactly and it’s a welcome change that works – but which also has some real heart and soul to it.
Santa’s Apprentice is unabashedly Australian but universal in the way it communicates how much we all need to belong and to be loved, and how that can happen in ways magical and mundane, but that however it happens, it’s a rich and wonderful thing that should be treasured and could change our lives in ways that will magically transform us and the people we know, not just at Christmas but always.