One man's death dissolves the quaint veneer of an English village with nasty secrets in HBO's oh-so-British "The Casual Vacancy," a three-hour miniseries that bounces between tragedy and comedy with ease.
The quietly disturbing drama, based on a novel by "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, shows the telltale signs of its authorship, even with no boy wizards about. Rowling's reliable go-to types are in place: Bumbling do-gooders. Abusive 1-percenters. Formidable old biddies.
The village of Pagford is home to Sweetlove, a community center that houses a methadone clinic. To some members of the village's parish council, especially Barry Fairbrother (Rory Kinnear), Sweetlove fulfills a moral responsibility to Pagford's less fortunate. However, a contingency of wealthy business owners would like to make Sweetlove into a swanky spa.
Barry, a progressive who pounds nails and wipes noses, takes a special interest in the Weedon family, his former neighbors who have fallen on hard times. He knows that Sweetlove is the fragile thread keeping Terri Weedon (Keeley Forsyth) from losing her battle with drugs. If Sweetlove closes, she's not going to take a long bus ride to the clinic in the big city. She's going to take a hit of heroin.
The shining star in this perfectly cast lesson in British class warfare is newcomer Abigail Lawrie. As Terri's teenage daughter Krystal, she embodies the classic addict's kid: Defiantly cynical, self-destructive and promiscuous, she still manages to keep herself in school and her little brother out of harm's way - with Barry's help.
So when a blood vessel explodes in Barry's brain, killing him, it plunges her life back into chaos, along with the rest of Pagford. Barry's spot on the parish council - the "casual vacancy" - will have to be filled before the vote on whether to sell Sweetlove. The claws come out quickly, and the British folk of Rowling's world keep theirs sharpened.
"Everyone grows up next door to someone," Barry's widow hisses in disgust after the umpteenth time someone praises her late husband's generosity, which often left her feeling overlooked. "It doesn't mean you have to look after them for the rest of their bloodsucking life."
Or does it? That's the question at the heart of "The Casual Vacancy," when it's not pointing out the fragility of Britain's social-welfare safety net.
The battle for Barry's seat is waged among three candidates: Simon Price (Richard Glover), Barry's half-brother, is a blue-collar dad who thinks he can win sympathy votes. Miles Mollison (Rufus Jones) is a puppet for his wealthy parents, who are practically salivating at the thought of another boutique business to bring big spenders into town. Colin Wall (Simon McBurney), a timid, asthmatic soul, is spurred on by his well-meaning but scatterbrained wife, Tess (Monica Dolan), who wants to carry on Barry's legacy and save Sweetlove.
Meanwhile, the teenage offspring of these broken families are left to navigate their own grief and upheaval, which they accomplish through a nihilistic cocktail of lies, petty theft, drugs and sex (including one encounter in the library that would have never, ever happened at Hogwarts).
Getting to know the other villagers, you get the sense quickly that their moral center, empathy and perspective were buried along with Barry. Even after his death, he's still a main character in "The Casual Vacancy," thanks to the story's reliance on eye-opening flashbacks and hallucinations.
And then there's the ghost of Barry Fairbrother, a troublesome entity that hacks into the town's website and starts dishing dirt about the candidates' personal lives. The ghost's postings eventually narrow the field of candidates, also setting off violence and one near-murder.
Sarah Phelps, who wrote for the legendary BBC1 soap "Eastenders," toned down some of the harshest parts of Rowling's book in her script. It's directed with a dark whimsy by Jonny Campbell, who has helmed a few "Doctor Who" episodes and the renowned supernatural series "In the Flesh."
The most satisfying confrontation happens at a dinner party - this is England, after all - when town elder Howard Mollison (Michael "Dumbledore" Gambon) can't stop himself from ranting about "making life easy for junkies."
"People have got to be responsible for their own choices," he blathers, sounding like the kind of guy who polices the grocery carts of shoppers on food stamps. Unfortunately for him, his doctor, another member of the parish council, is also at the dinner, and she's not having it.
"How much did your heart surgery cost?" asks Parminder Jawanda (Lolita Chakrabarti), going on to list the ways Howard neglects his health after accepting publicly funded health care. "You're practically mainlining foie gras into your eyeballs."
It's a brilliantly awkward scene, one that led some British commenters to dismiss "The Casual Vacancy," originally a BBC production, as "Tory-bashing." But rather than finger-pointing, "The Casual Vacancy" equates the hypocrisy of the privileged with the high-handed smugness of those who can't resist pointing it out. There are no saintly souls in Pagford, not past a certain age.
When tragedy strikes once more in the last act, the teens understand the implications of the town's latest loss immediately. It's the disaffected adults who keep asking defensively, "Well, whose fault is it?"