What is it about BBC dramas that they have to be so slow? It's like they haven't cottoned on that snail pace doesn't equal quality. Those days have long gone but by watching The Hour you wouldn't know it.
Now there's an irony calling a show The Hour when sitting through it, feels like six. This is the BBC's latest attempt to ape HBO/Showtime /FX and AMC. A couple of months ago we had The Shadow Line (which was touted by some idiot somewhere) as like The Wire in its complexity but where The Wire gripped for five seasons, The Shadow Line couldn't keep its audience for five episodes. Now we have The Hour, a show where everything seems tacked on. A murder mystery is tacked onto a 50's television newsroom drama, that is tacked onto a period piece. And to cap it all it moves like the M25 at rush hour.
So what does it want to be? Your guess is as good as mine. The words Mad Men have been bandied about probably by the same idiot that bigged up The Shadow Line but comparing this to Mad Men is like comparing Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men to The Sopranos. Mad Men made the advertising industry of the early 60's immediately assessable, while only people who worked in a 50's newsroom probably nodded and felt included with The Hour.
If the BBC want anymore ideas for these vague American knock offs, I've got a couple. How about Dick and Dom as brothers running a family undertakers in Dudley? Or Alex Jones as a widow forced to sell weed in Chipping Norton? I can't wait.
Over
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