WARNING: This blog is for people watching “The Hour” on Wednesday nights on BBC2. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t watched it yet – contains spoilers!
Catch up on last week’s instalment here
There’s something so delicious about the way The Hour keeps its viewers privy to a substantial slab of its plot all the way along. Of course, the revelations are skilfully spaced out through the episodes, but writer Abi Morgan mostly allows us a glimpse of what’s to come, meaning that you are on the edge of your seat for more details while also revelling in that oh-so-satisfying “I knew it all along” feeling. It’s a very difficult balance to achieve – you neither want that hackneyed horror film trope of keeping your audience so frustratedly in the dark they can literally only see to the edge of the light thrown by the protagonist’s torch, but nor do you want them to switch over, bored because the ending is so obvious from the beginning. This, the penultimate episode of the series, demonstrated just how perfectly The Hour has got this balance right.
Mr Cilenti. Photograph: BBC
For instance, we’ve known for a while that Soho nightclub impresario Mr Cilenti was a bad lot, and that eventually he was going to do something to force the staff of The Hour to pursue him openly. And so he did – but this being The Hour and all that, we got a double whammy of seedy escapades. Not only did he most likely order the murder of one of his dancers because she had been speaking to journalists, he also hosted and participated in a meeting enabling pro-nuclear politicians to profiteer outrageously from the nuclear arms race. All the while, Bel and Freddie struggle and squabble over their guilt about their source’s death and their naked excitement at the potentially huge political scoop – the personal and the political forever chasing each other around the script, indelibly intertwined.
Episodes that don’t actually build up to the airing of the eponymous news programme itself have tended to feel a little slower and less intense, but this one neatly sidestepped that problem by climaxing with the raid on Cilenti’s club, El Paradis. Commander Stern (remember him?) seems to have belatedly decided to face up to his own wrongdoing and start behaving like an honourable man again, sending his coppers into raid the club, arresting Cilenti for the murder of his dancer and many of the other girls for soliciting. The whole sequence – policeman and patrons running everywhere, tables overturning, lamps smashing to the floor, Stern himself shattering a mirror with a truncheon only to find incriminating photos spilling out from behind it – was set to a brilliant and frenetic jazz soundtrack. For me, it was the best bit of the series so far (narrowly beating the opening shot of this very episode, where a horizontal, tousled Ben Whishaw woke up in his brilliantly-lit bedroom).
We’ve also known for a while that Hour presenter Hector was ripe for poaching by the programme’s ITV competitor, Uncovered. In this episode, he finally receives a concrete offer from them, and appears inclined to accept – but not, as we might previously have assumed, because of the money or the status, but because of his wife. Marnie is making quite a hit with her cookery show – the line “rumour has it she gets more fanmail than Noddy” was one of my favourites from this episode – and the station has high hopes of them becoming a popular presenting duo. Having already disappointed her by his adultery and drinking, Hector now seems to have decided he must defer to her professionally to make amends (particularly as he seems to think it’s his fault they haven’t been able to conceive a child). Later, we get confirmation from Marnie that his neglect of their relationship inspired her career zeal: “Success is the best revenge. Don’t waste yourself on anything else” she tells her husband’s erstwhile lover, Kiki. After the way he’s behaved, it’s hard not to feel like she’s entirely justified in that feeling.
Journalists, on the trail of wide-ranging corruption, blend in by drinking martinis. Photograph: BBC
It took Bel a while in this episode to rediscover her inner campaigning journalist – to begin with, she was consumed with guilt about their source’s death and felt they should stop pursuing Cilenti because of it. But, as he always has, Freddie was able to bring her out of her cautious producer shell and remind her of her vocation. He does it in a characteristically blunt way: “She’s dead. I’m sorry. It’s not right. It’s very far from right. But we’re journalists. It’s what we do.” By the end, she’s even ditched her ITV bloke to join Freddie to dig around for evidence at the club. Although that may also have had something to do with the fact that Freddie almost-but-not-quite declared his undying love for her as they stood arguing about the merits of the investigation in the fog outside the BBC studios. My one source of frustration with an otherwise exemplary episode emerged here – Freddie’s wife Camille has conveniently disappeared and he now declares things to be “over” with her. After her brief, and often trouserless, tenure on the show, it would seem that she was always just a clumsy plot device to needle Bel – nothing more.
The best line of all, though, was reserved for Peter Capaldi’s Randall, who declared: “No man is sane who doesn’t know how to be insane on the proper occasions. Madness is a prerequisite for a good journalist.” Previously so quietly self-contained, we got a glimpse of the steely, slightly unhinged newshound that Lix fell in love with during the Spanish Civil War, here. He did some excellent journalism, chasing government apparatchik McCain down and expertly playing him for the location of the corrupt politicians’ meeting – managing somehow to disdain the very idea of blackmail while sort of doing some at the same time. Then, after a disappointing trip to the French embassy to try and discover more about their long-lost daughter, he crumbles, holding his head in his hands as he drinks with Lix. She sits next to him, reaches for his hand and puts it on her knee before leaning her head into his in unbelievable intimacy. “That’s a start,” he says, hoarsely.
Unfortunately, devastatingly, it’s also approaching an end, there being only one more episode of this series. The scheduling gods at the BBC have had mercy on us though – we only have to wait until this evening, rather than another week, for the denouement.
I’ll be blogging final episode of “The Hour” tomorrow – check back then for the last instalment, or bookmark this page
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