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. He abuses his son Andrew, sensitive and searching in Joe Hurst’s portrayal, and is just one of the menacing presences crowding around the town’s troubled kids, who serve as the story’s moral center.īut I appreciated the miniseries’ willingness to reach beyond moral satire. His death (car lot, aneurysm) kicks off the main conflict: Who will take his spot in committee, stoogy Miles Mollison (Rufus Jones), a pawn in his parents’ toxic scheme for Pagford, or Colin Wall (Simon McBurney), a fearful asthmatic with nobler dreams for the community but no balls to carry them out? The dark-horse candidate, Richard Glover’s Simon Price, is Fairbrother’s foul half-brother. Chief mensch, and most appealing of the lot, is local lawyer Barry Fairbrother (Rory Kinnear), a heart-meltingly decent advocate for the town’s destitute and meth-addicted-and the deciding vote on the parish council, which as the story opens is deliberating whether to convert a community center and addiction clinic into a luxury spa.
On the other side: the poor, and their good(ish) guy allies, cleaving to a handful of stereotypes-steely wives schooled in compromise clownish, well-intentioned husbands and a sprinkling of kindhearted minorities.
On one side: the reactionary conservative bigots emblematized by delicatessen owner Howard Mollison and his wife, Shirley (Michael Gambon, here the anti-Dumbledore, and a deliciously vile Julia McKenzie). The town is Pagford, a would-be Arcadian farming village riven by deep class divisions.
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