Television: ‘The Casual Vacancy’ v ‘Indian Summers’

It was billed as the battle of the big British dramas, both on at the same time on Sunday night: The Casual Vacancy, on BBC One, up against Indian Summers, on Channel 4. Both are visual treats with top production values and familiar casts.

All things aren't equal, though: for star power The Casual Vacancy holds the trump card: the three-part drama is a dramatisation of JK Rowling's first post-Harry Potter novel.

And the moods of these shows couldn't be more different. If you want a lovely bit of escapism head to the Himalayas of Indian Summers – the heat radiates out of the TV, which is lovely on a cold night in February.

If, however, you feel there's nothing quite like an hour of expert misery and the cold slap of social realism to set you up for the week, then visit Pagford, the chocolate-box village in The Casual Vacancy. It looks pretty and is not as obviously miserable as the setting of The Village or as any drama involving terminal illness.

But, behind the veneer, every character and scene underlines how class-ridden and dysfunctional Britain is. There’s the entitled toffs at the top in the big house, the craven middle class fuelled by Nimbyism and snobbery, and an underclass living on the outskirts of the village in an ugly council estate blighted by lawlessness, drugs and poverty. The parish council, headed by a blowhard pie-shop owner, Howard Mollison (Michael Gambon), and his wife, Shirley (Julia McKenzie), are determined that the twain never shall meet.

The Casual Vacancy is Midsomer Murder meets Shameless with a pace as unhurried as that of the sleepiest village. Gambon is the star of every scene he's in, as the bullying council leader offering his support – or deference – to the local lord and lady, who plan to turn the community centre into a luxury spa. This will have the happy side effect of keeping the poor out, as they will no longer have reason to leave their grim estate to come in.

Blocking the plans are a couple of Guardian readers – a big insult – on the committee, led by a socially conscious solicitor (Rory Kinnear). But – spoiler alert ahead– he drops dead before the episode is out, and Mollison persuades, with pies and the promise of paying school fees, his spineless son to go for election to the committee, so he can control the vote.

So this society is not only paralysed by class but also corrupt. Everyone is miserable, vicious or scheming, from the sniping, tipsy owner of a posh knicker shop (Keely Hawes) to the foul-mouthed teenage daughter of a heroin-addicted mother. If The Casual Vacancy were set in an Irish village, and made by RTÉ, there would be an outbreak of beard-stroking debate about our apparent self-loathing as a society.

The problem with a drama so driven by social and political criticism is that it’s hard for the viewer to find a way in. The characters are too emblematic to be real or to connect with. Why else would the death of the young, idealistic solicitor have no emotional punch?

Maybe the device of having him come back virtually from the dead, able to send messages to the villagers from cyberspace, will up the sorely lacking dramatic tension as the episodes unfold.

In colourful contrast is Indian Summers, or what the Downton set did when they were off ruling India. It's 1932 – cue trunkloads of gorgeousness from the costume department – and the British toffs, chancers and assorted charlatans who rule India are decamping, as usual, from the cities to escape the blistering summer heat in their Little England fantasy world in Simla, in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Their time as the ruling class is nearly up, and they know it: rumblings of Indian independence are getting louder, and pamphlets about Gandhi have arrived in the village, although discontent hasn’t yet trickled down to the servants.

The centre of all social life in Indian Summers is the Simla Club – with its "No dogs, no Indians" sign – run by the ebullient Cynthia (Julie Walters), who knows everyone's secrets and is a cross between a Mafia fixer and a bordello madam. I get the casting of Walters, who does big and brash brilliantly, but I wonder about her character: could such a non-U person really be at the heart of things in the days of the Raj?

Perhaps that’s overthinking a drama that has already laid out several uncomplicated and intriguing storylines, with terrific acting and pacy direction, to be tied up at the end of the 10-week series.

What became of the husband of Alice Whelan (Jemima West) back in Blighty? Can she really reinvent herself as the grieving widow? Why did that Indian interloper try to kill Ralph Whelan (Henry Lloyd- Hughes)? A lowly civil servant, Aafrin Dalal (Nikesh Patel), took the bullet for the boss and is rewarded with a promotion. How high can he go? (My guess is far: in a drama where everything looks gorgeous, Patel fits right in.) And what’s the story with the American brother and sister?

The cast is huge and teeming with backstories to be prised open. It’s perfect escapism on a Sunday night.

There is escape of a different kind in The Romanians Are Coming (Channel 4, Tuesday). The title is loaded with such fear and dread that it nearly demands a response of “Charge!” or “Pull up the drawbridge!” And with the UK on an election footing, and Nigel Farage never far from a camera, the three-part documentary could have been a benefit-scrounger exposé – but it’s not.

Narrated with wit and an engagingly jaunty realism by Alex, a Romanian who has been in the UK for four years, it doesn’t shy away from stereotypes: Stefan is just off the boat and, with no English, manages to sort out his benefits and, says Alex, get “his shitty teeth fixed on the NHS”. But we see dreadfully sad hard cases, too, men who, having left families behind, arrive with nothing, homeless and ill equipped to get work.

This first part puts faces on an issue; how those three fare will be worth following. tvreview@irishtimes.com