John Lewis 2020 Christmas ad to feature heartwarming tale of starving former employees who stumble across a soup kitchen
2020-08-23
Filming got under way this week on the always-popular John Lewis Christmas TV ad for 2020. In a departure from the usual schmaltz, this years ad’ will have a harder edge more reflective of the difficult year we’ve all lived through.
It starts out with shop staff being handed their P45’s and then shown the door by a hard faced manager in a suit. Over the next few minutes we experience a montage of scenes, shown over some shit from Coldplay, as the workers descend in to increasing levels of desperation, culminating in alcoholism, petty theft and prostitution.
Starving, bedraggled and weak, we see them staggering through a landscape of urban decay reminiscent of a zombie apoclypse movie. But it is then that one of them sees a light. They move towards it, and as they get closer they see a window and people inside being fed. Their faces erupt in smiles and as they join the other homeless inside to be handed a bowl of luke warm cream of mushroom and a stale roll by the very manager who handed them their P45. He shows them the Rolex watch he got as a bonus for effectively managing the redundancies. As the screen fades to grey, we hear the booming strains of Light Up by Snow Patrol.
“It’s very moving,” a John Lewis insider told The Bugle “Sod the Polar bears and the poxy Dragons this year, we’re going full out on the poverty porn. People are going to love it.”
As The Bugle went to press, retail analysts were awaiting news of how Marks and Spencer will respond.
