I
never heard of this little show until I stumbled onto it while browsing through
one of the DVD shops in Cambodia. But then, after so many
years abroad, there’s a lot of stuff I never hear about. So you guys tell me—how famous is this TV show
back in America? Should I have heard of it?
If
you haven’t heard of the show, it’s an interesting concept. It’s a British TV show about a fictional news
broadcast show in Britain
back in 1956. Essentially, it’s Mad Men meets The Newsroom. With a premise
like that, it certainly got my interest.
A version of the Newsroom
which, instead of just recycling last year’s news, appeals directly to us
history geeks? Plus all the fun of a good period piece? Yes please!
Plus, it’s British, which appeals to the Anglophile in me. Plus, it takes place against the backdrop of
the Suez Canal Crisis, which is one of my pet historical interests. Why have I never heard of
this show before?
It
might be unfair to compare every mid-20th century period drama to Mad Men, but, let’s face it, it’s also
inevitable. And, at least on the
surface, there’s a lot of similarities.
Although some anachronisms do slip in (W), there is, as with Mad Men enough attention to detail in
costumes, sets and designs to create a feeling of period authenticity.
And,
as with Mad Men, the show often seems
to be sending the message: In the olden
times, people sure drank and smoked a lot.
But back then it was sophisticated, because they drank in their business
suits and ties, and everyone was suave and good-looking. Also, it was before the behavior became stigmatized,
so you could be a respectable businessman and still get sloshed every afternoon.
(Plus, the characters in The Hour are
all English, which makes it even more
sophisticated when they swill cocktails, talking in their crisp English
accents.)
By
itself, the idea of Mad Men meets The Newsroom would have been sufficient for an interesting show. But the funny
thing about The Hour is that, after
watching it for 20 minutes, it becomes apparent very quickly that the writers
weren’t satisfied with their initial premise. And so all of a sudden we have a
serious drama about television news in the 1950s, occurring right alongside of
the second plot, a ridiculously over-the-top cloak and dagger spy story.
And
then more and more genres just keep getting thrown into the mix. Plot lines that are ripped right out of
daytime soap operas (the search for the long-lost daughter) get dropped right
into the middle of the show. Or all the
characters head out to Hector’s aristocratic family’s country estate for an
episode, and all of a sudden the show turns into Downton Abbey.
As
all of these different shows get thrown into the blender together (Mad Men + The Newsroom + James Bond
+ Downton Abbey + daytime soap opera), the question one
has to ask when evaluating this show is: Is less more or is more more?
I’m
undecided. To be honest, it actually can
be kind of fun watching all these things in the blender together. And the show does kind of act like “one-stop-shopping”
for all your entertainment needs. At
least, that is, for season 1.
(Season
1 was balanced just about right, with the serious historical stuff being given
equal time to the more trashy parts of the show. Season 2, however, got the balance wrong, and
let the soap-opera-y parts of the show take over.)
On
the other hand, the constant need to keep adding disparate elements to the show
does indicate the writers didn’t have enough faith in their initial
concept. And they should have had more
faith. It could have been a very
interesting show just by focusing on the television news aspect alone.
A
friend of mine once observed about Newsroom
that the tragedy of the show was that the premise was really promising. It could have been a very interesting show dramatizing
how the news actually gets made in real situations. Of course Newsroom
was still highly watchable for all its faults, but you lament the show that
could have been.
One
feels the same way about The Hour. It’s still watchable but you can’t help but
lament for the show that could have been—the show that was right under the
writers’ noses—a drama about what broadcast news was like in 1950s Britain, back
when television was still in its infancy, back when people were still trying to
figure out what this new medium was capable of, and back when the British Empire was crumbling all around them.
Although
this is nominally the premise of the show, there are only small hints of it in
the first season, and by the second season it is abandoned altogether.
The Hour was cancelled after 2
seasons. And because this is a British
show, the seasons are shorter than American television—only 6 episodes
each. So the whole thing was only 12
episodes long.
This
show might be a good example of Whisky Prajer’s Kill Them Young dictum [LINK HERE]. Two short seasons allow all the faults of
this show to be forgiven. Any more
seasons, and I expect it would have worn out its welcome.
Link of the Day
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