The dark horse contender is Barry’s ne’er-do-well brother Simon (Richard Glover), who pilfers television sets, physically abuses his soft-spoken son Andrew (Joe Hurst) and generally establishes himself as a rotten apple more than willing to (further) spoil the whole bunch. What none of the campaigners are prepared for, though, is the appearance of “The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother,” a mysterious chatroom user with a talent for unearthing unpleasant secrets.
As the adults of Pagford bicker over their town’s future, betraying their vile true natures, the show’s troubled teens watch on, either with barely contained disgust or complete and utter disinterest. There’s another link to Rowling’s modus operandi – as with Harry Potter, the characters worth caring about, and the ones that really matter, are the kids, despite the attention-grabbing antics of abhorrent snakes like Howard and Shirley (although I doubt there will be any two villains more execrable on television this year).
The show’s most interesting player is Krystal Weedon (Abigail Lawrie), a girl from the Fields whose mother is eternally strung out on heroin, leaving Krystal to care for her toddler brother. The Casual Vacancy is at its best when it cuts away from all the sickening political gaming in Pagford and dives into the miseries of Krystal’s everyday life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do that nearly often enough, especially given that Lawrie summons both grit and grace for a powerhouse performance that’s easily the best in the series.
The other kids include Andrew, a sensitive sort who is cowed by his aggressive dad; Stuart (Brian Vernel), Andrew’s unlikable best friend who uses Krystal for sex and seduces her with the vacant sentiment that she’s “authentic”; and Gaia (Simona Brown), a newcomer to the town repulsed by much of what she sees. Seeing the adults’ actions through their eyes is sometimes amusing but always unsavory. Oddly, though, the show too often shuffles them to the back of its deck of characters, meaning that even after spending three hours in Pagford, viewers won’t feel particularly attached to any of the more interesting residents.
The main issue with The Casual Vacancy is its format. A three-hour runtime constrains a massive amount of characters and confines a complex collection of stories much more than it should, and as a result, the series feels rushed, every character getting short shrift. There’s an interesting story at the heart of The Casual Vacancy, but it’s buried in a tangled ball of plot threads and under-developed supporting players, so much so that watching the series is often a bit of mental workout with trying to keep track of all the moving parts.
Additionally, without any redeeming qualities to most of Pagford’s citizens, the series is often a slog to get through. Screenwriter Sarah Phelps delivers some terrific dialogue, and she’s done an admirable job of adapting a much more sprawling novel, but the show is all inky darkness without any redeeming light to provide a contrast. Rowling intended her novel as an indictment of bourgeois apathy and of the secrets and lies that make up the bedrock of small towns like Pagford, and the adaptation is true to that. But by restricting itself to three hours, any statement The Casual Vacancy tries to make is delivered incompletely and in an awful hurry. And considering how bleak and even nihilistic its story is, viewers might just be inclined to tune out altogether.
