The Wire

In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, BBC2. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Wednesdays, 10pm ET/PT, BBC America. Starts August 17

If you listened to me on Radio 5 a couple of Saturdays ago, you’d have heard me warbling on about US TV’s attempts to cash in on the Mad Men period vibe with two new shows: The Playboy Club and Pan Am. Now, before anyone over here starts to feel so superior about America’s supposed unoriginality – and it’s debatable just how much of a cash-in those two shows are – let’s have a look at BBC2’s The Hour, which doesn’t so much try to cash in on Mad Men as scream to the rafters, “Look! We’re doing a British Mad Men! Look!”

Set a little earlier than Mad Men in 1956, this slightly navel-gazing tale does what The Playboy Club is doing by marrying Mad Men with the crime drama. In this case, we have two heroic journalists (Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai) working at the BBC’s very dull newsreel service but wanting to produce the Corporation’s new properly journalistic, TV news service, all while juggling their emotional lives and the prejudices of the time – men-only bars and “no coloureds, no Irish” signs in hotels. But along the way, Whishaw discovers a conspiracy involving murders, suicide and Torchwood‘s very own Burn Gorman.

Cue the “Look how cool we are” trailer.

Continue reading “Review: The Hour 1×1”