Ein plötzlicher Todesfall

Fantastic look into human nature and the way we British are with one another. Living in a rural town myself I have met a few people like those in this mini-series.

I would thoroughly recommend this to everyone. The story is originally by J.K. Rowling so of course it's going to be brilliant. She once again blew me away with her detailed and thrilling story. The BBC did a fantastic job with adapting it too. Really well written. And they had an incredible cast from Michael Gambon to Keeley Hawkes (a particular favourite of mine).

What nailed it for me was the ending. A true look into how unlucky you can be (or how lucky) and to know who your real friends are. Moreover, the little things can create a domino effect and become bigger than you thought. I was in emotional shock in the end. I love it when a film or TV series is SO good that I don't see it coming.

Now stop reading this and go watch it!

JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, a grim adult novel which she wrote under pseudonym looks at life in a small market town of Pagford dominated by grotesque characters like they stepped out of an updated Dickens novel. I have heard it said that the book is also inspired by the play, An Inspector Calls, where various characters in the village are in effect the Birling family who have been responsible to the ruin of a young girl's life.

Michael Gambon is the power mad, money grabbing parish councillor who wants to turn a community centre into a wellness spa. Julia McKenzie plays his malicious wife and Keeley Hawes is the flirty but brittle daughter in law. Rory Kinnear is the one who has fought against the closure of the community centre and whose sudden death create the casual vacancy in the parish council and Gambon wants his spineless son to stand and others also wish to contest the seat but a ghost writer on the internet is revealing some home truths.

Yet Pagford is not a place just for the haves. Poverty is rife as well as drugs, drink, teenage sex and domestic violence. This is also the story of teenager Krystal Weedon, living with a drug addicted mother and looking after a baby brother with social workers hot on their trail.

The three part drama series is a world away from Harry Potter. I know my daughter, a Rowling fan attempted to read The Casual Vacancy but gave up, it was not her kind of book. The series has a bittersweet and grim tone. It is political in context between the haves and haves not, the latter who are getting the rug pulled from under their feet.

However the series was not wholly a success, maybe lacking humour, satire and maybe some comeuppance against some horrible people. I believe the ending was changed and softened to make it less tragic from the novel. However I felt that the series would had worked better as a two hours television film and maybe done with being less star studded, Emilia Fox for example was wasted.

What is not in doubt is that Abigail Lawrie was outstanding as Krystal.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book but feel that this adaptation was an utter let down. The book needed very little work to adapt to the screen but instead new relationships were invented and old ones ignored throughout. The original characters were lost, the cast contained good actors but several were miscast, the hallucinations (with Death) were ridiculous. I was really looking forward to this show but I think whoever was in charge utterly missed the point - other than trying to portray real characters, and even in this attempt I believe the changes they made to how characters behaved meant that in the big picture relationships didn't work properly and characters were shallow. They should have stayed true to the book instead of altering nearly every aspect.

Had to write a quick review to counteract the ridiculous first review from whom I can only assume is one of the privileged snooty characters from the programme. I honestly thought it was a joke outside. The programme isn't particularly crude: it shows a realistic depiction of fairly ordinary life, swearing and sexuality included.

Yes, Britain really is like that, and the drama painted a very intimate and affecting portrait of the lives of ordinary people, the hardships they face, and their failings as human beings.

Highly recommended. Apparently IMDb wants me to write more, so I'll say that the scenery is also very nice, so if you fancy a holiday somewhere with nice countryside, I believe it was filmed in the Cotswolds...

The acting is good and a with complex plot from Rowling but over-all not worth my time. None of the characters were really appealing or convincing (except for the dead ones) and I could not really engage with the story-line. Considering everything, i can't recommend this film. I stuck it out it the end but finally I was sorry I bothered.