An indictment of materialism and a triumph of the human spirit. This critically acclaimed adaptation fully and faithfully realizes the Charles Dickens classic in all its emotional depth and timeless relevance. Above 19th-century Coketown, soot billows from the mill's smokestacks like black flags. As the town's leading citizen, Thomas Gradgrind values hard facts and unflinching reason above all else, and he teaches these values to his children, Louisa and Tom. Gradgrind's friend, the self-made industrialist Josiah Bounderby, manages his mills with similar heartlessness - much to his profit. But a series of events shakes both men to their very core, causing profound pain to those around them and an eventual awakening. From the company that brought Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel In The Crown to the screen - and from the writer and director of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - this production features Dickens' unforgettable characters struggling with remarkably contemporary conflicts: the demands of technology versus the needs of society, and the practical power of materialism versus the mighty pull of the human heart.