There’s a lot of outrage on the New Statesman website today, but none of it comes close to how I feel at the news that the BBC has decided not to commission a third series of The Hour. The Radio Times reports:
It had been the original intention of the production company behind the programme, Kudos, to produce at least three series. Jane Featherstone, chief executive of Kudos Film and Television, said she was “sad and disappointed” by the decision.
The BBC said: “We loved the show but have to make hard choices to bring new shows through.”
Digital Spy implies the decision had to do with the fact that the second series’ ratings didn’t live up to the promise of the first:
The first series of The Hour launched with 2.89 million viewers in July 2011, but the show’s second run fared less well in the ratings, opening with just 1.68 million.
Regular readers will know that I’m something of a fan of The Hour – I wrote a regular weekly blog on the second series – and thought it was one of the best new dramas the BBC had commissioned in ages. It’s not often you get new writing of such subtlety being acted by a cast who are mostly moonlighting from the silver screen (in the shape of Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai and Dominic West). And as I harped on about incessantly in the blog, Anna Chancellor and Peter Capaldi pretty much stole the show in the second series, too.
It’s no objective measure, to be sure, but the spike in traffic to my blog and Twitter when the series aired in America and Australia recently suggests The Hour’s appeal went far beyond a few lefty journalists who like Fifties outfits. Contrast it, if you will, with Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge, which the BBC inexplicably allowed to run over five episodes, despite the fact that it has no plot whatsoever. All the beautiful singing and close-ups of Chiwetel Ejiofor in the world can’t redeem a lengthy multi-part period drama where absolutely nothing happens and people inexplicably go for long picnics on trains. As the NS’s Rachel Cooke points out in her TV column in the magazine this week, Poliakoff created types, not characters – scratch the shiny surface away and there’s nothing there at all.
Abi Morgan’s Hour, by comparison, arguably had too many plots at the same time. If the BBC does indeed stick by its decision to cancel it (I can’t help but hope someone somewhere will realise the error of their ways shortly) we’ll never know whether Ben Whishaw’s face recovers from the beating it received in the line of duty, or whether he and Romola Garai ever manage to get it on. But most importantly, we’ll have lost a genuinely writerly drama from our screens – one that didn’t rely on bangs and flashes or ludicrous locations or stereotyped characters to draw you in. Personally, I would have watched The Hour just as avidly as a stage play, such is the strength of Morgan’s characters. The BBC’s quote says they want to create space to “bring new shows through” – I, for one, will be surprised if they replace it with anything with quite so much class.
PS If this is indeed the end, I thought we should enjoy some of the best images from the second series. Try not to sob on your keyboards, now.
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