The Hour Season Two

Season Two of the BBC series The Hour has made its appearance on BBC America recently and having watched the first two episodes I feel compelled to give the series a huge positive rating.

So few shows are intelligent and compelling. We can find shows that intrigue us, Revolution, The Walking Dead, for example. We can find shows that are intelligent but rarely both. With it's nod to history and the assumption that we as viewers have a basic knowledge of it, The Hour is a superbly done show.

The first season centered on the personal relationships of the staff of a new British news show in the fifties. The British government is in the middle of the Suez Crisis, and Eisenhower is far from the most popular figure on the right side of the pond. The cast is led by Ben Whison as reporter Freddie Lyon, Dominic West as anchorman Hector Madden and Romola Garei as Bel Rowley.

Hector Madden is the stereotypical anchorman, portrayed as handsome, charming, and incredibly self indulgent and centered. Freddie Lyon as the young reporter and best friend, Boy Friday of the female lead, Producer Bel Rowley or Moneypenny as he calls her. Rowley has a face that one does not forget. She is not attractive in the modern women as stick way, and not in the over the type Jane in Mad Men crazy way, but in one of the most alluring ways I can recall. For me Rowley is not a woman to take your eyes off and her character in show is just as alluring. When one thinks of the woman she is portraying from that time period one must come to appreciate those women even more.

Along with the Suez Canal we have a second storyline involving a former acquaintance of Lyon who as Lyon looks into her death uncovers a Communist conspiracy.

Season two starts up nine months later, Freddie is gone after being fired, and Belle is carrying on. In the first two episodes Belle is producing away, with a new producer who is asserting more control than she likes, soon into episode one Freddie has returned from his travels and has been hired back. Bel is glad to have back, however she is perturbed by her not being consulted, and even more shocked by a surprise he unveils.

Hector, if anything, has moved further down the road of decadence and seems to be self destructing at a rapid rate, his wife moving from being constantly feeling abandoned to resolving to live her life next to him but not with him. As Season Two takes off Hector's self destruction moves at a rapid clip and embroils everybody in it's wake.

The news, the history, the backstory of Season Two is if anything is more interesting than the first, Britain has gained a Nuclear Bomb and the government is fear-mongering to move attention from a crime wave and with British censors being a constant antagonist as the producers struggle to air the stories they wish is continual.

Few shows you will watch can place you in a time period as well as The Hour. Mad Men at the beginning did so, as the show has moved into the mid sixties the efforts to place the characters in the historical time period have seem contrived and stilted while those same efforts in The Hour are seamless.

The cast is strong, intriguing, and not to be forgotten. Watching the British shows on PBS, these shows on the BBC America Wednesday night block one wonders if there is a reason that British network, not cable mind you, network television appears to be so strong in comparison to ours.

It is a question well worth asking. In the meantime this is not a show to be missed.