Episode 2 (The Casual Vacancy) praised the cast, in particular Abigail Lawrie, Rory Kinnear and Rufus Jones Ceri Radford of "The Telegraph" gave the episode 4 out of 5 stars, despite some reservations about the digressions, saying: Episode 2 (The Casual Vacancy) "Episode 2" is the second episode of the British miniseries "The Casual Vacancy" based on the novel of the same title by J. K. Rowling. The parish council election approaches and Pagford is on tenterhooks awaiting the next post from 'the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother'. Who is the Ghost, and what will they say? Is anyone in the village safe from humiliation? As
BBC television drama is to say, good television entertainment." The overwhelming majority of BBC television drama produced during the 1930s consisted of adaptations of stage plays, but there were exceptions. These included the first multi-episodic drama serial, "Ann and Harold", a five-part story about a married couple which began showing on 12 July 1938. There was also "Telecrime", a series of ten- and twenty-minute plays which presented various crimes, with the viewers given enough clues to be able to solve themselves using the evidence shown on screen and the specially-written drama "Condemned To Be Shot" (1939). As with almost all programmes of the