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osprey_archerI just finished watching the first season of the BBC’s The Hour, which I found immensely frustrating for reasons that Abigail Nussbaum quite handily lays out in this post. (Ever since I found Veronica Mars through Nussbaum’s glowingly adulatory posts, I’ve found her blog a good site for TV recommendations and anti-recommendations, although clearly this post had slipped my mind.)
There’s actually quite a bit to like in The Hour. Romola Garai is stunning as Bel, as always, even if I facepalmed a lot at the love quadrangle choices that the writers made for Bel. I kept going to the end because I thought that the last episode would tie everything together in a death-or-glory television broadcast in which Bel and her buddy Freddie get themselves fired by blowing the top off a governmental scandal and possibly exposing a murder or three.
Well. Not so much.
It’s spoilery, so
Freddie and Bel do manage to get themselves fired, but they don’t actually manage to expose anything in the process - least of all the most important story, the attempted assassination of Nasser.
By the final episode, Freddie and Bel have proof that the MI6 was involved in the murder of a debutante. They have shakier proof that the government asked the MI6 to assassinate a foreign head of state. They have no proof at all that England, France, and Israel were colluding to take back the Suez Canal from Nasser, although recent events strongly suggest that this must be the case. Talking about any of this on the BBC is for various reasons illegal.
Naturally, they decide to hint really heavily at the collusion story that they can’t prove. They then hint vaguely at the murder of the debutante by bringing her grief-stricken father to the studio to rant at the camera in a manner that surely has the folks at home wondering why the BBC is exposing this batty old man to the public limelight. Then the broadcast gets shut down.
What makes this so frustrating is that the writers are clearly aware, on some level, that as death-or-glory stands go, this is not very impression. Bel and Freddie’s mentor Clarence lays out every single frustration that I have when he shouts at Freddie at the end of the episode, demanding to know why Freddie didn’t tell the world about the attempted assassination. Nussbaum’s comment about this scene is so perfect, I’m just going to quote it here:
Freddie's answer is that it would be irresponsible to destabilize the government in the middle of a war, and it's a good thing that Clarence's response to this is to throw a tantrum, because that provided me with the vicarious outlet that kept me from throwing something heavy against the wall. How can you make a statement like this--surely one of the core questions of journalism--as if it were a matter of course and plainly obvious to any reasonable person, ten minutes before your season ends? That question is what The Hour should have been about--where is the line between necessary dissent and treason? Where does a journalist's higher loyalty lie--with the truth, or with the nation?
But The Hour doesn’t even try to answer those questions: it follows up Clarence’s tirade with the immediate revelation that Clarence is a Soviet spy. Because apparently the only reason a journalist would want to reveal information embarrassing to the government is because they are a traitorous traitor.
There’s actually quite a bit to like in The Hour. Romola Garai is stunning as Bel, as always, even if I facepalmed a lot at the love quadrangle choices that the writers made for Bel. I kept going to the end because I thought that the last episode would tie everything together in a death-or-glory television broadcast in which Bel and her buddy Freddie get themselves fired by blowing the top off a governmental scandal and possibly exposing a murder or three.
Well. Not so much.
It’s spoilery, so
Freddie and Bel do manage to get themselves fired, but they don’t actually manage to expose anything in the process - least of all the most important story, the attempted assassination of Nasser.
By the final episode, Freddie and Bel have proof that the MI6 was involved in the murder of a debutante. They have shakier proof that the government asked the MI6 to assassinate a foreign head of state. They have no proof at all that England, France, and Israel were colluding to take back the Suez Canal from Nasser, although recent events strongly suggest that this must be the case. Talking about any of this on the BBC is for various reasons illegal.
Naturally, they decide to hint really heavily at the collusion story that they can’t prove. They then hint vaguely at the murder of the debutante by bringing her grief-stricken father to the studio to rant at the camera in a manner that surely has the folks at home wondering why the BBC is exposing this batty old man to the public limelight. Then the broadcast gets shut down.
What makes this so frustrating is that the writers are clearly aware, on some level, that as death-or-glory stands go, this is not very impression. Bel and Freddie’s mentor Clarence lays out every single frustration that I have when he shouts at Freddie at the end of the episode, demanding to know why Freddie didn’t tell the world about the attempted assassination. Nussbaum’s comment about this scene is so perfect, I’m just going to quote it here:
Freddie's answer is that it would be irresponsible to destabilize the government in the middle of a war, and it's a good thing that Clarence's response to this is to throw a tantrum, because that provided me with the vicarious outlet that kept me from throwing something heavy against the wall. How can you make a statement like this--surely one of the core questions of journalism--as if it were a matter of course and plainly obvious to any reasonable person, ten minutes before your season ends? That question is what The Hour should have been about--where is the line between necessary dissent and treason? Where does a journalist's higher loyalty lie--with the truth, or with the nation?
But The Hour doesn’t even try to answer those questions: it follows up Clarence’s tirade with the immediate revelation that Clarence is a Soviet spy. Because apparently the only reason a journalist would want to reveal information embarrassing to the government is because they are a traitorous traitor.
