The Mayor of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy's bummer of a tale of personal failings, decorous deceptions, and poetically just comeuppances receives an impeccably mounted production from the A&E cable network, which continues here its winning string of stellar adaptations of classic literary works. In a moment of alcohol-fueled weakness, poor farmhand Michael Henchard (an appropriately austere Ciaran Hinds) betrays his wife and child in the cruelest way imaginable: he literally auctions them off. Twenty years later, she returns to find him reformed, contrite, and considerably moved up in the world--a successful businessman and mayor of a small town. But their reunion, and his introduction to the daughter he last saw when she was just an infant, rocks Casterbridge's polite society. Hardy's condemnations of constrictive, hypocritical moral tenets remain as pointed today as in the 19th century, as this fresh and pertinent adaptation beautifully illustrates. Sure, it's depressing...just like real life. Recommended. (M. Johanson)