Hard Times: This extraordinary production captures the soot and smoke that blot out the sun in dank industry-choked Coketown. Local MP and schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind (Bob Peck) raises his children Louisa and Tom in the ... more »utilitarian fashion stressing reason and fact and dismissing imagination and emotion. Under his influence Louisa grows cold while Tom turns to a secret life of drinking and gambling. To be nearer her brother Louisa accepts an offer of marriage from his boss the self-made self-important banker Josiah Bounderby (Alan Bates) though she does not love him. But soon she finds herself succumbing to the attentions of the Casanova James Harthouse (Richard E. Grant). As Louisa faces a life without love and Tom's fate begins to turn even darker will Gradgrind begin to realize the imperfections in his philosophy of rational self-interest OLIVER TWIST: The classic story of the poor orphan, Oliver experiences the terror and brutality of the criminal world with his companions: a pickpocket, a thief, a prostitute, and a fence. Born and raised in the appalling deprivation of the workhouse, the orphan Oliver escapes only to fall in with a gang of child thieves. Oliver's rescue by the kindly Mr. Brownlow is only the beginning of a series of adventures that lead him to an incredible discovery« less