The Casual Vacancy
A funny one I decided to revisit in a post-JK Rowling Villain Arc world. I assume I'm the first person to watch this in 5 years because it has 0 seeders on every torrenting site.
It's a weird relic of David Cameron's Britain that generally fits a soft Labour propaganda mould, albeit Blair Labour rather than Corbyn Labour -- within ten mins our "compassionate hero" tells a heroin addict he won't give her money cause she'll just spent it on drugs, and we're meant to nod along as he does. How sad to kill off Rory Kinnear in your first episode! Abigail Lawrie is really great as Krystal and I think Brian Vernel has such a striking face, I was really glad to see him show up in Star Wars and Slow Horses. Michael Gambon, Keeley Hawes etc are all totally overacting as these pantomime characters. The whole thing is a panto about British class struggle, big loud bag guys are all posh and kind people are all non-white or have strong Northern accents. I really just don't think JK Rowling is a very smart person to be dealing with this subject matter, and I also think her experience of being working class has been tainted with the condescending attitude of someone who is now a billionaire. But I really loved this book when it came out and I was 16 and had never seen a Ken Loach film. But now I could just watch a Ken Loach film! Shoutout to the really good score, adding a star for that.