Hard Times was a 1977 TV series based on Charles Dickens' 1854 novel of the same name, directed by John Irvin.
Episode One
Thomas Gradgrind, a leading citizen of Coketown, raises his daughter and son to prize hard facts above soft sentiment. His friend, Josiah Bounderby, shares Gradgrind's philosophy and applies it in running his bank and textile mills. But when a circus comes to town, it introduces the Gradgrind children to a new world of imagination, as well as to a new companion - Sissy Jupe, a young performer whom their father adopts as his ward.
