J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy Miniseries Coming to BBC and HBO

These are the facts:

I have only ever read about 15 pages or so of J.K. Rowling's prose, and that was a sampling of her first Harry Potter book (whatever that one was called).  It was highly recommended to me by one of the strangest friends I have...well, had.  Bored me silly (both the book and the friend).

I do have a copy of The Casual Vacancy stashed somewhere around the house.  It was handed to me by a friend who loved it so much that I've been afraid to read it in fear of offending her with my reaction to the thing.  (I'm not very hard to read, despite my best efforts with certain friends, when it comes to my opinion of a book or genre.)

All that said, what reader of the last decade could possibly not know who J.K. Rowling is - and I do applaud her for turning a substantial number of boys into readers.  So in gratitude for that achievement, I want to mention that The Casual Vacancy has been made into a BBC miniseries.




According to The Playlist, this is the official synopsis of the film:

The Casual Vacancy centres on Pagford, a seemingly idyllic English village with a cobbled market square and ancient abbey. Behind the pretty façade, however, is a town at war: rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils.

Well, sorry, but that sounds a bit like any small town or village I've ever known of.  The trailer has a bit of a soap opera tone to it, so I'm hoping there's a good bit more to both the book and the movie than it appears at first glance.

The BBC will broadcast the miniseries sometime later in 2015, and since it was produced in conjunction with HBO, I assume that that network will be showing it this year also.