from the BBC Press Book

COKETOWN is a place of dark factory walls and dirty streets where the sun is blotted out by soot and smoke. It is a loveless world where the philosophy of the market predominates over human sensitivity and true passions are repressed.
Banker Joseph Bounderby (Alan Bates) is the epitome of this world, a self-made, self-important industrialist who is propped up by the well-born but equally well-widowed Mrs Slparsit (Dilys Laye) who knows where her fortunes lie.
Local MP and school master Thomas Gradgrind (Bob Peck) has raised his children Louisa and Tom (Beatie Edney and Christien Anholt) according to an educational system that supports this economic regime, one of "fact not fancy".
Even a visit to a local circus is frowned on, and when Gradgrind adopts an orphan circus girl Sissy Jupe (Emma Lewis), she too has to conform to the system. As a result, Louisa has grown cold and distant, while Tom, forced to work for Bounderby, adopts a secret life of drink and gambling.
In order to be nearer to Tom, Louisa accepts an offer of marriage from Bounderby, a man for whom she feels neither love nor respect. Subsequently, Mrs Sparsit is enraged at her relegation in the Bounderby household and longs for Louisa's downfall. Fate arrives in the guise of full-time Lothario and sometime politician, Harthouse (Richard E. Grant). Slowly, Louisa succumbs to his attentions, while Mrs Sparsit watches and waits.
As the drama unfolds, the thin veneer of respectability is stripped away to reveal the hyprocrisy of a society in which everything is valued by price.

Each year the BBC School Programmes transmits over 28 half-hour dramas under the generic title, SCENE. Used extensively by teachers it introduces a sophisticated audience of 14 to 19-year-olds to all types of modern drama, each transmission coming with a free copy of the script. The longer dramas, such as the feature-length "Hard Times," according to producer Richard Langridge, "are more closely tied to the curriculum, and are set out to bring the texts to life, using imaginative productions and first rate casts." ||||

FOR whatever marketing reason, a new production of Charles Dickens's "Hard Times," Sunday on PBS, is being promoted by "Masterpiece Theater" as "darkly comic." But there is little or nothing comic about this novel, written in 1854. As Russell Baker, the series host, notes, it is the only Dickens story that doesn't even pretend to have a happy ending. His portrait of Coketown, actually Preston in Lancashire, is a bitter indictment of the squalor and pollution of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England.

With a few exceptions, the major characters, depicted here with delicious malice, are fools or scoundrels. Topping the list is the bullying, self-made businessman Josiah Bounderby, played to a ferociously conniving turn by Alan Bates in his first performance on "Masterpiece Theater" since the 1978 Dennis Potter adaptation of Thomas Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge." His philosophically compatible friend is Thomas Gradgrind (Bob Peck), former hardware salesman and now a Member of Parliament, long on a crusade to teach the young the virtues of a new fact-oriented creed called utilitarianism, a forerunner of bottom-line corporate capitalism. Downsizing and all that.
Add Gradgrind's hapless children, cold Louisa (Beatie Edney) and devious Tom (Christien Anholt); Mrs Sparsit (Cilys Laye), a would-be middle class lady resentfully down on her luck; sissy Jupe (Emma Lewis), the quintessential Dickens heroine, exuding sweet and sometimes cloying innocence, and a noble working man named Stephen Blackpool (Bill Paterson) who refuses to join a factory union. (Dickens really did believe that job inequities would be solved by enlightened employers showing kindness, patience and "cheery ways.") Mix well with everything from a bank robbery to treacherous behavior, and you have the basic, rather dispassionate formula for "Hard Times."

This darkly compelling two-hour production, adapted and directed by Peter Barnes ("Enchanted April"), takes a detour from the standard "Masterpiece Theater" period-costume style of production. Actually, it was made for BBC School, the educational arm of the British organization. Its productions are broadcast during school hours, and classrooms have the option of tuning in. "Hard Times" has been radically compressed into what Mr Baker calls a quick romp. No matter. Two of the greatest Dickens adaptations were the 1940's David Lean versions of "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist," each running about two hours.
Floating from one tight close-up to the next, and conveying a sense of place with a minimum of props, this is an almost impressionistic interpretation of "Hard Times." Strong performances, especially from the always wily Mr Bates, convey the essence of Dickens, even when stripped to bare essentials. ||||