"Hard Times" as retold by Neil Kinnock

There's a "Not the Nine O'Clock News" sketch where the host of a TV programme aimed at young people - who wants to be hip, but ends up sounding like an unusually despotic teacher - sternly asks a hapless young man just what is wrong with his life at present. The youth is stumped, but a helpful friend stage-whispers to him: "The Tories..."

I was reminded of this sketch when I saw the "Hard Times" TV adaptation by Peter Barnes. The Tory party - which is confidently identified as Gradgrind's party - seems to crop up time and again in conversation as a symbol of both Gradgrind's and Bounderby's hard-hearted opinions. Now, I would have thought that a Benthamite who calls one of his children Adam Smith would be a Liberal, but what do I know? The boundaries between the main parties in Victorian England seem to have been a lot fuzzier than between the clear-cut ideologies we were taught at school, and the Tory label does explain how the high-born Harthouse fits in. Moving on, Stephen channels Jean-Paul Marat in one scene, scowling and snarling at his Capitalist Oppressor - small wonder he gets the sack. Slackbridge is in the cast list, so he must have made an appearance, but I wonder who he was supposed to be: surely not the sturdy salt-of-the-earth man who tried to persuade Stephen in a reasonable sort of way to join the Union and called him "lad"? After Stephen (not quite in Marat mode yet) has had his chat with Bounderby about his hopeless marital affairs and wanders home disconsolately, there are huge posters proclaiming "Vote for Gradgrind" all along the way. Having trouble with your Missus? Who's to blame? THE TORIES.

Though the ideological content of the book has been tweaked to fit the adapter's views, I wasn't that fussed. In a way, Dickens deserves it, as his social criticism is such a mess it's hard to make anything of it. Especially, though, there was hardly time to mind, as the adaptation moved along at a fair lick. It is interesting that, although it offers him an excuse for a bit of bourgeois-bashing, Barnes doesn't dwell in the world of Coketown longer than he has to. You'd almost believe that he's not that much fonder of the book than I am. As an overview of "Hard Times" the adaptation works well and painlessly enough: it's not deep or complex, but then that is not altogether the fault of the adapter.

The actors do their best. Pity poor Alan Bates who starts off boisterously enough as Bounderby, but then loses heart somewhere along the way, as he realises there is really nothing more to this character than bone-headed tirades. Bob Peck as Gradgrind does better, but then he's got a - comparatively - meatier part to work with. The big "making a silk purse out of a sow's ear" prize goes to Harriet Walter for injecting a bit of life into the hopeless part of Rachel. I was disappointed at first by Alex Jennings's Bitzer, having optimistically hoped for very fair (maybe albino?), very young (Sissy's age at a guess - nineteen tops), forehead-knuckling villain totty. Jennings is not fair, not nineteen, not forehead-knuckling, and does his prissy darnedest not to be totty. But he has a persuasive take on the character and won me over in the end. The venom with which he flings out "I paid for it [Gradgrind's schooling]" and the satisfied power-vacuum-here-I-come-smirk when Bounderby croaks in front of him are nice touches.

Has anyone but me noticed, incidentally, that Tom deserves to get caught? He committed a theft in cold blood; he deliberately pinned the crime on a completely innocent, if annoying, man; he is not in the least bit sorry; he has kept the spoils and has thus profited by his crime; and it is quite likely he will steal again. He is a walking catalogue of reasons why you should lock a criminal up. This isn't necessarily a flaw, though. It says something about Sleary and the circus people that they gladly help someone who is not deserving in order to do Gradgrind a favour: it doesn't diminish their kindness, but makes it more of a personal gesture than if Tom had been blameless. It says something about the supposedly rational Gradgrind that he is blind enough to ask Bitzer "What motive [...] can you have for preventing the escape of this miserable youth" when there are dozens. And it says something about Bitzer that he has no interest in occupying the moral high ground, but ignores the more worthy motives for capturing Tom in favour of his own selfish ones. Yes, I admit it, even "Hard Times" is not without interest: no book by Dickens could be.