the leading man is my tpye

The greatest movie ever made..!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Barry was a member of the Pagford Parish Council and due to his death they have to elect someone to take his place. The candidates were: Mr Colin Wall, the Headmaster at the local school; the dependent Mr Miles Mollison, the son of the self-absorbed Parish Council leader Howard Mollison; and the abusive Mr Simon Price, Barry's half-brother. Simon pulls out of the election after his son, Andrew, creates a Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother who mocks the candidates. In the end Mr Miles Mollison wins the election by one vote as Mr Colin Wall votes against himself. The Pagford Parish Council's focus is voting for whether Sweetlove House should stay as a community centre, a necessity for the Fields Council Estate, or to be turned into a spa, a luxury for the village of Pagford. The decision has disastrous outcomes. Barry Fairbrother, who dies unexpectedly, is an extremely sympathetic character who is married to Mary Fairbrother. Barry and Mary have no children but Barry's unsympathetic and abusive half-brother Simon Price, who is married to Ruth Price, has two children: Andrew and Paul Price. Simon's son, Andrew, is best friends with Stuart (Fats) Wall who is the adopted son of Tessa Wall, Krystal Weedon's counsellor, and Colin Wall, the Deputy Headmaster at the local school. Fats has a sexual relationship with Krystal Weedon, a resident of "The Fields Council Estate". Krystal is very protective of her younger brother, Robbie Weedon, because their mother, Terri Weedon, is a recovering drug addict. During the series the Weedons get a new temporary social worker, Kay Bawden. Kay has a daughter Gaia Bawden, who Andrew Price gets a romantic interest in. Towards the end of the series Andrew Price and Gaia Bawden get a job at Howard Mollison's delicatessen. Howard Mollison, the unsympathetic Leader of Pagford Parish Council, is married to Shirley Mollison. In the series Howard and Shirley only have one child Miles Mollison, who is a lawyer, is married to Samantha Mollison, who owns a failing lingerie shop. Miles and Sam have two twin daughters, Lexie and Libby. Samantha develops a crush on Vikram Jawanda, a cosmetic surgeon, who is married to Parminder Jawanda, a GP and a member of the Pagford Parish Council. Vikram and Parminder have a silent daughter, Sukhvinder, who says one line in the whole mini-series and that line is: "Whose f***in fault is it then?" after Krystal Weedon tragically drowns, one of her most significant lines in the series raising the question of our responsibility for other. Parminder is good friends with Barry Fairbrother and, like Barry, want to save Sweetlove House, bequeathed to Pagford by ancestors of Aubrey and Julia Sweetlove. Aubrey and Julia Sweetlove want Sweetlove House to be turned into a spa for their own profit. A main theme of the mini-series is the widening gap between rich and poor, The Sweetloves/Howard Mollison vs The Weedons/Barry Fairbrother. The rich (Sweetloves and Howard) want Sweetlove House to become a spa so that they can get more money whereas Barry wants to keep Sweetlove House as a Community Centre because he knows what it is like living on The Fields Council Estate as he, as a young boy, lived there. The story is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy's tragedies set in rural Wessex where circumstance and social attitudes are seen as significant contributors to someone's unnecessary death as Barry, unfortunately dies in a rural town Pagford.

It's difficult to know where to start with this very disappointing drama. Set in a beautiful rural village where millionaire business people and professionals in their grade I listed manor houses live but a well struck 5 iron from a sink estate full of drug addled benefit scroungers and ne'er-do-wells, it seems to be attempting to highlight cultural and social divides, unfairness and inequity in our society. Fair enough, reasonable basic idea.The problem was that the story was, quite frankly, rubbish. Initially it looked like a small guy vs. nasty rich property developer yarn, but this never really materialised in any meaningful or interesting way. When the impassioned champion of said small guy, and always excellent, Rory Kinnear dies at the end of a rather slow scene setting first episode, a from-the-grave on-line ghostly presence appeared to be setting up episodes 2 and 3 to develop into a ghost story (it didn't), or a taut psychological drama (didn't do this either). Instead it meandered between low level soap opera story threads (which mostly led nowhere interesting), made trite, obvious, uninteresting social commentary on far too many topics to be impactful, and ended up as a tragi-drama with a completely random drowning crow-barred into the story to provide some sort of "conclusion".Low points - Gambon and McKenzie and Richard Glover were cartoonishly "bad", Emilia Fox's character was totally peripheral. The final scenes when the young boy wanders off and is then effectively abducted, not 20 yards from his mother by a well meaning doctor, who never thought to look for, or shout out to, any parents before carting him off home, was just ridiculous.High points - Abigail Lawrie and Rory Kinnear were excellent, Keeley Hawes pretty good. Rural town setting was very nice indeed.

I've read Rowling's book, but not in its entirety because I couldn't stand the way she writes. Obviously, all the good ratings in here are from people who worship Harry Potter. Never liked that either. Now, about the adaptation: This book is about all the evil and ugliness in the world gathered in 500 pages. So was the series. It had no redeeming quality, except from the much better handling of Barry, who we're supposed to care about, because he changes everything in Pagford with his death. Lawrie is an excellent actress and so is Keeley Hawes. Never liked Gambon but he succeeds in being a complete dick. But the material doesn't help us to like what we 're seeing, it's all black, angry, sad. This is not how the world is. It's not just black and white. But I guess Rowling is depressed. Anyway, I think the changes were better than the book.

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.