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HBO and BBC are tackling JK Rowling´s The Casual Vacancy as a miniseries. And even though the cast is superb and the cinematography is also excellent; the show so far fails to capture the book´s escence. As a standalone miniseries would be good enough, but if you´ve read the book you won´t enjoy it as much. The miniseries is too slow when compared to the book. Maybe because it felt the need to recreate the backstory from earlier than the book, with Barry Fairbrother´s life being featured with him alive for over half the first episode.
The casting department, even though they selected an awesome array of British stars, looks quite different as the descriptions on the book, so you need to adjust a lot if you´ve read the book.
Also, if you are a Harry Potter fan, you´ll get to see a few actors from the saga there, especially Albus Dumbledore with Michael Gambon playing Howard Mollison.
In the show, The citizens of the small British town of Pagford fight for the spot on the parish council after Barry Fairbrother dies. The Casual Vacancy as a book was perhaps an over effort from JK Rowling to move away from children stories, and maybe exagerated some passages to further it away from the Wizarding World saga, making lots of sexual remarks, and tons of insults. The miniseries tones it down, but also tones down the flow of the story. A co-production between BBC and HBO, Created and Executive Produced by Rowling herself.
All in all, the miniseries is worth watching, but if you are ok with slow pacing shows. And by slow I mean really slow.
What do you think? Have you watched The Casual Vacancy on HBO? Are you going to give it a shot? Follow me on Twitter for more scoop.