pfgpowell-1 Review of The Hour

The Hour (2011–2012)

Don't get your hopes up. Sadly, this is BBC drama by numbers

[11 August 2011]

There is so much out of kilter in The Hour that it is difficult to know where to begin. And it didn't do itself any favours (or, at least, the BBC press and marketing department didn't do it any favours) by billing itself as Britain's answer to Mad Men. The only thing they have in common is that both are set in a previous age, a previous era, really. But that's it. Where Mad Men aimed for top-dollar quality in every department - in treatment, approach, acting, direction - The Hour takes the easy way out and just serves up what it thinks the viewer wants. It aims no higher, which is a shame, because really good, memorable drama always aims higher, aims to tread new ground, aims to establish new conventions rather than, as The Hour does, slavishly follow the old, established, safe conventions. The twists, the scenes, the hackneyed lines, it is all so safe, safe, safe. That is not to say it fails miserably: it doesn't. It is entertaining enough and intrigues, and leaves the viewer keen to be told the solution to a mystery which has so far involved two murders, an apparent suicide, the secret service, more than just hints of official skullduggery and Soviet spying, all against a backdrop of some of the more dramatic moments of Fifties British history. But at the end of the day, from the casting, to the storyline, to the acting and the dialogue, this is TV drama by numbers. Unlike Mad Men (or two other startling originals, The Sopranos and The Wire), this is TV drama which takes no risks and as a result if just part of the herd. For this viewer at least almost none of the characters convinces. The exception of Anna Chancellor as the battle-hardened foreign editor - somehow she pulls it off. But the others just don't. They are each giving a 21st-century interpretation of Fifties Britain which, in so, so many ways is just plain wrong. The journalists aren't journalists, the toffs aren't toffs and, worst of all, the attitudes aren't authentic British attitudes. This review is being written perhaps rather prematurely, and I have only seen the first four episodes. Perhaps, my some miracle, it will take off and improve remarkably. But, you know, I don't think so. I really don't. We Brits do some things better than the Yanks we are, despite ourselves, rather in awe of, rarely, but most certainly occasionally. This is not one of those occasions. Stick to Mad Men, The Soparanos and The Wire for true originality.