Critic Reviews

Screenwriter Sarah Phelps has deftly adapted Rowling’s novel into a cautionary, metaphorical tale that pulls its weight and measuredly draws one in.

A three-hour miniseries that bounces between tragedy and comedy with ease.

The result is a warmer story, streaked with satire rather than marinated in it. Perhaps the greatest contribution comes from the performance of someone who barely appears: Rory Kinnear (best known as the Prime Minister in the pig episode of “Black Mirror”), whose Barry is a poignant, meaningful figure, a do-gooder whose loss is real for the town’s most vulnerable residents.

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.

The Casual Vacancy is a heartbreaking, thought-provoking if occasionally simplistic look at the tyrannical power of the picturesque.

Like the book, the miniseries can come across less as a believable depiction of a community than as a collection of grotesques, despite the best efforts of its top-notched cast to give their roles three dimensions. The one major exception is Terri's daughter, Krystal, a fully fleshed-out character played to perfection by newcomer Abigail Lawrie. [1 May 2015, p.50]

This Casual Vacancy is a little too earnest, which renders the depictions of the class warfare trite and preachy.... [Abigail] Lawrie disrupts the coziness that occasionally threatens to calcify The Casual Vacancy into another lush, prestigious book-on-film, imbuing it with an authentic cry of the damned.

The Casual Vacancy is more interesting than it is enjoyable, an unsparing look at the reality of English country life, not the reverie.

I appreciated the miniseries’ willingness to reach beyond moral satire. There are glimmers of big cosmic tragedy in this Vacancy, when the camera swings away from two characters arguing (or hooking up) in order to highlight some mythic element in the landscape.

The show sets itself up with a lot of potential, but can’t keep all its plates spinning fast enough or long enough to result in a true spectacle.