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“Absolutely, the McQueens,” she enthuses.
“I remember just reading about the McQueen
family and I thought that they were drawn
with such honesty and nuance, you don’t see
that on TV very often. I think Vic herself is
a really phenomenal character and I think
the relationship with her parents is really
fascinating. That, and of course the whole
crazy world of it! In addition to the really
brutally honest family there’s also a place
called Christmasland, and a 135-year-old
man! So I just thought that the world was
fascinating and also really honest.”
As fans of the book will tell you, Hill
performs a dazzling high-wire act combining
the big fantastical swings with such a
grounded family story. On the one hand,
you’ve got this Christmas-obsessed monster
in his vampiric automobile who’s constantly
shifting ages and on the other you have
a heroine who is dealing with a horribly
relatable everyday life living under the
shadow of addiction and domestic violence,
and O’Brien tells us that bringing that to the
small screen was exactly as complicated as
you’d expect.
“Yes, it was tricky!” she laughs. “We kind
of took our cue from the book because one
of the things that I think is really wonderful
about it is that it is, at times, really scary,
sometimes it’s really funny, and at the
centre of it there is this family drama with
Vic McQueen at first with her parents and
later she kind of creates her own family. So I
thought that it was important to try to keep
all of those elements in the show because I
