THE HOUR

i just finished watching THE HOUR the new bbc series. I LOVED IT- the 1st season had only 6 episodes. what a pity! the cast is incredible, especially ben winshaw! romola garai is hauntingly beautiful and stylish!!!!

a must see, according to VOGUE MAGAZINE 

 the characters work in London television news, and because the miniseries starts in 1956, there’s plenty of news: The West and the Soviet Bloc face off in the relentless, sinister cold war, Nasser will cause the Suez Crisis, Soviet tanks will roll into Hungary.

The Hour is a meta-show: one hour on the BBC about a show called The Hour on the BBC.

 It’s the story of two ambitious young TV journalists, a producer, Bel (Romola Garai) and a reporter, Freddie (Ben Whishaw). They’re part of the launch of a news show called The Hour. Freddie wants to be the anchorman but is preempted by the older, smoother Hector (Dominic West, from The Wire). Pretty, sexy Bel, the producer, is an anomaly in 1950s England, an ambitious woman. She’s close to Freddie, but in lust for the married Hector. The suspense is set off when an academic—who has something to do with an engaged debutante—is murdered in a subway corridor; Freddie, who moves in the debutante’s circle, sets out to investigate.

The drama is promising, and all the characters fascinating—the absolutely splendid Anna Chancellor is mesmerizing as a brisk, hard-drinking foreign correspondent, and Julian Rhind-Tutt is over-the-top yet believable as the prime minister’s oily press advisor. Only the art direction lets down the show: London looks like the Prague set for an expressionist movie, and the costumes are strangely off. These drawbacks could be due to budget considerations, which loom over our world now just as the cold war loomed over the 1950s.  The Hour’s writer-producer, Abi Morgan, announced today that the show will return as a second miniseries that picks up the story nine months after the end of the first. We can look forward to more sexy, suspenseful history lessons.