robert-temple-1 This spectacularly brilliant drama series is Britain's answer to America's MAD MEN and Denmark's BORGEN. It is every bit within their league. Set in 1956 and 1957 at the BBC (with contemporary footage of the Suez Crisis and a speech to camera delivered by Anthony Eden himself), it features searingly powerful performances, intrigue, melodrama, mystery, pathos, comic moments, and profound psychological studies of the characters. It was written ('created') by Abi Morgan, who wrote the screenplay for BRICK LANE (2007, see my review), one of the finest British independent films in years. I suppose I must have met her at the private screening of that, but do not recall her personally, as I was too busy being charmed by the alluring Monica Ali who wrote the novel. Morgan has written the film SUFFRAGETTE (where Meryl Streep plays Emmeline Pankhurst), directed by the same Sarah Gavron who directed BRICK LANE, which many of us are eagerly looking forward to in 2015. It features the amazing Romola Garai and Ben Whishaw, who are both in THE HOUR, so it looks like key talent are sticking together and forming a much-to-be-welcomed old pals' club. Maybe that will result in a lot of first-rate films and series, if they bundle up their enthusiasms and push hard as a team. It reminds me of the talent cluster which surrounds the American director Amy Heckerling (see my review of CLUELESS, 1995, where I discuss that). In THE HOUR, the central performance which makes the entire series compulsive viewing is that by Romola Garai. She has so many emotional shades no spectrum analysis could ever classify them. Astronomers study spectra to see what stars are made of. But this star is made of everything. You want hydrogen? She's got hydrogen. You want helium? She's got that too. Rare earth elements, heavy metals, inert gases, mercury, iron, radioactive elements, everything is there. Just turn on Romola Garai and it all spews out as a cosmic jet, different each time, always perfectly tuned to requirements. And such big soft eyes alternating between insecurity and determination! Such female vulnerability mixed with such inflexible will! What a woman! But let us not forget Dominic West, whose masterful performance as a nice guy who just cannot control his impulses has plenty of shades of subtlety as well. We don't know whether to cuddle him or kick him, and neither does Romola Garai or anyone else for that matter. What a masterful performance of the ambiguities of a shifting, rootless personality! And then there is Ben Whishaw, skinny and earnest, heroic in his idealism but hopeless in declaring his love, also perfectly portrayed. Anna Chancellor is in a strong supporting role and gives what it probably the finest performance of her career. Once again, we find more shades than exist on any palette, if I may drag in one more metaphor. She comes from a Somerset gentry family named Windsor Clive, whose nearest neighbours are badgers and crows, but somehow Anna has acquired an encyclopaedic understanding of human nature in between long, thoughtful country walks in the hills, and she draws on emotions which some people do not even have, in her well-rounded portrayal here of a woman posing as a hard-bitten 'woman who has seen it all' but who is tormented by the loss of her child which no one knows she had. Everything about this series is so subtle, the sets and costumes and perfect, the atmosphere is all there. Anton Lesser and Peter Capaldi are unforgettable in their major roles also (Lesser in Season One and Capaldi in Season Two). Julian Rhind-Tutt oozes such powerful poison and menace that he provides one of the best portraits of a sinister Whitehall mandarin ever filmed. And Oona Chaplin, what a surprise! There are so many grandchildren of Charlie Chaplin popping up with talent. This one is Geraldine's daughter. I must say I was previously unaware of her, but she is so exquisitely talented that now she will be giving her first cousins James and Aurélia Thierrée a run for their money as most talented Charlie grandchild. In THE HOUR, so much talent pours out of Oona that it could be called Oona's Ooze, which if other actors are not careful can easily engulf them as she steals all the scenes. Although she was in an episode of SHERLOCK (2010, see my review), I somehow missed her in all the excitement. This time no one can miss her. So altogether, this is just one big bag of thrill, and a triumph of television drama. What, no third season? Or fourth? Or fifth? Has the BBC simply no staying-power? More please.

The_late_Buddy_Ryan Now available on disk from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Prime, this smart, stylish BBC series, set in the mid-50s, really hits its stride by the end of its first season. Sumptuous Bel and geeky Freddie (Romola Garai and Ben Wishaw), escapees from the BBC newsreel floor, are the offscreen talent behind the eponymous news program; Hector (Dominic West) is the hearty, "highly corruptible" frontman. The plot lines are a little over the top at times—Mr. Kish, the palefaced spook who self-destructs when he fails to hit the target, is straight out of the old "Avengers" series (not necessarily a bad thing)—but the interplay among the main characters is beautifully portrayed. Anna Chancellor and Peter Capaldi are great together as a pair of prickly ex-lovers, and Oona Chaplin, at first mainly decorative as Hector's neglected wife, has an amazing scene in which she kicks her latest rival to the curb in the kindest, gentlest way. The first season is built around the Suez Crisis and the Burgess-Maclean spy scandal, but the political backdrop is pretty much self-explanatory; the second season reverts to more familiar hardboiled themes—bent cops, shady nightclubs, showgirls in jeopardy and a porno racket (innocuous b&w photos in this case)—before getting back to the big stuff, high-level corruption and the nuclear threat. A "behind the scenes" clip on the second DVD focuses on the obsessively detailed production design, which, as with "Mad Men," is a big part of the show's appeal.

Francis Hogan Comparisons with "Madmen" are inevitable but they also run the risk of distracting the viewer from properly appreciating "The Hour" in its own right. For all the obvious similarities between the two shows with their period-piece settings and respective portrayals of entrenched misogyny, this BBC/Kudos production marches resolutely to the beat of its own drum. "The Hour" is gritty and gray. It's temperature is cold. One of its main themes is the examination of conflict in a variety of forms; the deep internal conflict between ardent idealism and soul-numbing compromise or between personal integrity and ruthless ambition; and the dogged pursuit of truth in the face of suppression and censorship. Other classic struggles between opposing dynamics are also explored. These include individualism and conservatism, inspiration and convention, impoverishment and privilege, courage and fear, rational caution and paranoia, democracy and tyranny etc - all of which are set amid the historic backdrop of two salient international military conflicts. The landscape is panoramic and the brush-strokes reach far and wide but the painting remains clearly defined. All the elements are tautly packed into a 360 minute thought-provoking thriller. If comparisons must be drawn, then "Goodnight and Good Luck" might prove to be a helpful suggestion. With its subtle script, insightful direction, solid casting and a stunning performance from Ben Whishaw, "The Hour" is one of the BBC's finest. Congratulations to all involved with this production. Thoroughly recommended.

LCShackley THE HOUR is a decent 2-hour movie crammed into a 6-hour miniseries.It's about a ground-breaking BBC news show in 1956, in which the daring, progressive news team dares to face down the government and its undercover minions! Doesn't this sound like a thousand other BBC plots: government=bad, journalists=good! Of course, the bad government is carrying on a bad war, and covering it up with evil spies! I wonder if we're supposed to draw any comparisons with more recent history. Hmm!Some people compare this with MAD MEN, seemingly for the sole reason that it's set in the 1950s. For me, it's like a bad British remake of BROADCAST NEWS with a spy plot grafted on. By the last episode, it's easy to forget all the details of the setup, although I must say the writer did a decent job of explaining the whole plot (something the Beeb often forgets to do). The main character is an annoying little git who looks like Frank Sinatra's famous mug shot photo. The rest of the cast is more tolerable, including a tightly-wound Anton Lesser, the versatile Julian Rhind-Tutt in a semi-tough guy role (hard to take seriously with those dorky 50s glasses), and Burn Gorman, sinister as usual with his mouth like a badly-healed scar.Having worked in broadcasting for many years, I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes aspect of the plot. The spy subplot needed LOTS of tightening, but even so the series was worth a watch.