J.K. Rowling's 'Casual Vacancy' reveals rot in small town life

Early in the second half of HBO's J.K. Rowling adaptation, The Casual Vacancy, Michael Gambon's character, Howard Mollison, visits his doctor to get antibiotic ointment for a skin condition.

The doctor gingerly lifts a fold in the man's bounteous stomach to reveal a gross red rash.

As metaphors go, Gambon's nasty tummy isn't elegant or subtle, but the image perfectly encapsulates the story's satirical thrust.

Enjoyable, funny and wickedly profane, the three-hour miniseries is about an idyllic hamlet in the English countryside that, beneath its picturesque green fields, hides a grotesque world of political corruption, adultery, domestic abuse, hatred, jealousy, sloth and other sins too varied to name.

Coproduced by HBO and BBC, The Casual Vacancy airs Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m.

Rowling's first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, was published in 2012 to mostly positive reviews. But some critics complained it focused too much on Muggle minutiae - details of the boring lives normal folk live in the real world. The story, after all, is about a town council battle in a tiny hamlet over the fate of a small community center.

The TV version is anything but tedious.

The Casual Vacancy is brilliantly structured, directed with an assured hand by Jonny Campbell   and stars some of the best TV actors in Britain. It's an example of the kind of social complex storytelling that American audiences have come to love from British imports since the days of Upstairs/Downstairs.

As the first part opens, a jogger leads us through the gorgeous streets and parks of the fictional village of Pagdon. Half a mile in one direction, though, and things aren't so cute: The Fields is an impoverished area rife with crime, drugs and people with bad teeth.

The first scene takes us to a meeting of the Pagdon parish council - and right back down to earth. The council members debate the future of Sweetlove House, a community center founded and funded in the mid-19th century by the local aristocratic family, the Sweetloves. For 150 years, it offered social and medical services, including drug counseling. Trouble is, the place is a magnet for all the riffraff from the Fields.

Howard Mollison (Gambon) and his wife, Shirley (Julia McKenzie of Agatha Christie's Marple fame) want to turn the place into a boutique hotel and spa. The couple are puppets for the newest Sweetloves, Aubrey (Julian Wadham) and his wife, Julia (Emilia Fox), who are sick of subsidizing a place where heroin addicts hang out.

The drama - and the council fight - heats up when the Mollisons' archenemy on the council, liberal solicitor Barry Fairbrother (Rory Kinnear) suddenly drops dead in the street. The rest of the series follows the dirty war waged over Barry's empty council seat.

The Causal Vacancy beautifully weaves together story lines about vivid characters of all social classes and of all ages with funny, heartbreaking and shocking vignettes about the hangups and bossiness of the main players and their children. It proves that Britain's tradition of social satire is very much alive and as powerful as ever.

The Casual Vacancy

Miniseries shown over two nights: 8 p.m. Wednesday and 8 p.m. Thursday on HBO.

EndText

215-854-2736