The BBC drama about a BBC news
programme returned last week, and it's never felt more relevant.
In the first episode of The Hour’s second series, loathsome political accomplice,
Angus McCain advocates that “A lie has no legs. A scandal - now, that has
wings.” With slicked-back hair and hinted-at homosexuality, actor Julian
Rhind-Tutt injects the lines with the hostility and malice that those who
avidly watched the drama’s first series have come to expect from him. His
beloved Prime Minister Eden might be gone, but McCain wants to convey from the
outset that he still exerts power in the shadowy world of Westminster. And in speaking
these words, he’s also setting up a series’ worth of plot points, and reassured us that writer Abi Morgan has decided to stick with
a successful formula.
Nine months have
passed since the show-within-a-show, The Hour, started on the
BBC, and a new head of news is changing the course of events. Hector Madden (Dominic
West) is still lead host and Lix Storm, (Anna Chancellor) remains as producer,
but last year’s ordeal mixed with his father’s death has led Freddie Lyons (Ben
Whishaw) away to Paris for
the time in between. Missing her right hand man, we can instantly tell that
Bel’s passion for the show has decreased since last year. Freddie soon returns older, wiser and
better poised as a meaningful rival (and co-host) to Hector for the status of
the show's alpha male.
 |
| Ben Whishaw as Freddie Lyon, The Hour's home affairs correspondent. |
It was impossible for Morgan to
know when writing The Hour’s second series that it would air in a week when
the real-life BBC has been encompassed in scandal that hinged on inadequate management
and investigative journalism gone wrong. The Jimmy Savile affair and the Lord
McAlpine disaster are hardly equivalent to having Soviet spies wandering
around the corporation's canteen, but it still feels more topical than a drama
should be observing producer, Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) wrestling with the
problems of sourcing and news management, and worrying that ITV’s competitor
programme, Uncovered, has stolen her idea for a hard-hitting
investigative news show and is delivering it better than she is.
The changing
role of women is at the very centre of The
Hour; the character of Bel Rowley is based on the real-life BBC producer Grace Wyndham Goldie. As the show focuses on the making of a BBC
programme about contemporary events, The
Hour is very much about Britain: the British establishment attempting
to adapt to or control a world on the edge of dramatic change. The first series
was set against the backdrop of the Suez crisis; the current series, a year later in 1957.
Two fairly well-known faces
have joined the show this year, in the form of Peter
Capaldi (The
Thick of It;Torchwood) and Hannah Tointon (The
Inbetweeners; Switch). Both make wonderful first impressions, with the
former joining the Hour team
and the latter acting as the catalyst for Hector’s troubles. Overall, this
episode was a great return for a series that was, at times, too complicated to enjoy. There’s more of a focus on characters and relationships than on
outside scandals and world events, and this gives it the potential to be even more successful than the first series.
The Hour continues on BBC Two every Wednesday at 9pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00wkh14/The_Hour_Series_2_Episode_1/
No comments:
Post a Comment