The Casual Vacancy

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.

Written and produced by ...JK Rowling, of Potter films inc. It's a three part mini-series. We're ten minutes into part one, and nothing yet. But, it gets going fast! Turns out a couple of richers want to turn the community center land into a "wellness retreat", which should make someone a lot of money. But the board of Pagford has a responsibility to keep the center open, helping the locals. It's all very ethereal... when the lead supporter of the council can't do it any more, they want to fill the spot with someone who will back the new wellness center. But... some of the locals who depend on the community center step in.. in various ways. The vote is approaching... who will fill the vacant spot? And who is uncovering secrets that need to be uncovered? It's pretty interesting. Sense of drama and suspense. Directed by Jonny Campbell. Had directed the remakes of Dracula and Westworld.

This series made me want to weep - at the senseless waste of acting talent and script material. For this is not a TV dramatization of "The Casual Vacancy" by J. K. Rowling. It's a TV dramatization of the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of The Casual Vacancy. What's more, it appears that slashing it down from a full series to a 3 part synopsis was done after filming already started, probably by the director tearing pages out on the set, rather than by intelligent script writers. How else to explain the presence of all the characters from the book, yet no role - not even dialog - for some of them? How else to explain all the setups in Episode 1 that are just left hanging with no follow-up? What does remain is excellent, completely capturing Rowling's characterizations and the petty snobbery of English village life, but the ruthless editing leaves too much out and too many loose ends. There's no exploration of the interaction between children and parents that is core to the book. There's no hint of who is behind the "ghost", a major plot device. Sukhvinder, who has a life-changing experience in the original, is literally seen but not heard. There's no resolution for the dysfunctional Price family. I don't know why the scriptwriters even bothered telling us Gaia's name, since she's reduced to a walk-on extra.

What's left, basically, is an excellent performance from Michael Gambon and Julia McKenzie as the Mollisons. It's worth watching just for that. But that's the tragedy of this series - these are the canonical Morrisons, nobody will ever do it better. And that means the series will never be remade, and the full story will never be told.

They did not need to add a "thorough intro" to the mini-series. The introduction that the book provided was perfect. (The book's end was perfect too.) We start with Barry Fairbrother's sudden death and then see how the town starts to deal with it. Barry Fairbrother: What happens when the good man in town, the smart man, the progressive man, the honest man, the open-hearted man, up and dies? You are left with everyone else. This is what JK Rowling explores. The dynamics of a small-minded tight community.

I saw this series when it first aired and it has impacted me still, four years later.

I have never seen so much story packed tightly into 3 episodes before. There are layers upon layers showing the many different lives people live and how the characters interact alone and in a group.

This series has a very powerful "before you judge others, consider what they are going through" message without slapping you in the face with it. I even felt shame for making an early assumption about one chatacter that I inevitably adored and admired greatly.

You know those "How are you feeling today?" forms with every emotion possible listed? I felt nearly all of them through each episode.

The most impactful scene that brings emotion just thinking about it even four years later was paired perfectly with the song "Choir to the Wild" by Solomon Grey. There has not been a better song matched to a scene in any move I have ever seen. I discovered Solomon Grey through this series and love all of their music.

The acting was outstanding and the scenery was lovely.

It's not a light, happy series at all, but it is a fascinating look at life from many different perspectives and will certainly cause you to look at things differently.