Now available on disk from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Prime, this smart, stylish BBC series, set in the mid-50s, really hits its stride by the end of its first season. Sumptuous Bel and geeky Freddie (Romola Garai and Ben Wishaw), escapees from the BBC newsreel floor, are the offscreen talent behind the eponymous news program; Hector (Dominic West) is the hearty, "highly corruptible" frontman. The plot lines are a little over the top at times—Mr. Kish, the palefaced spook who self-destructs when he fails to hit the target, is straight out of the old "Avengers" series (not necessarily a bad thing)—but the interplay among the main characters is beautifully portrayed. Anna Chancellor and Peter Capaldi are great together as a pair of prickly ex-lovers, and Oona Chaplin, at first mainly decorative as Hector's neglected wife, has an amazing scene in which she kicks her latest rival to the curb in the kindest, gentlest way. The first season is built around the Suez Crisis and the Burgess-Maclean spy scandal, but the political backdrop is pretty much self-explanatory; the second season reverts to more familiar hardboiled themes—bent cops, shady nightclubs, showgirls in jeopardy and a porno racket (innocuous b&w photos in this case)—before getting back to the big stuff, high-level corruption and the nuclear threat. A "behind the scenes" clip on the second DVD focuses on the obsessively detailed production design, which, as with "Mad Men," is a big part of the show's appeal.

I so wanted to like this show that I watched the whole first series... I love Madmen and wanted to give this time to develop into something similar,another richly subtle and voyeuristic view into a begone era.What I got was someone's a 21st Century wish what they would have liked the 50's to have been. Chauvinism-lite that let's our talented and plucky girl get everything she wants accept an affair. Racism that is challenged with no apparent consequences, just do the story and problem solved. People lighting up in studio like the 50's while others go outside to have a smoke like modern second-hand pariahs. I waited patiently for this to take off, for the conspiracy to make sense. Figuring there is some missing clue that will bring this all together. Then the climax into some hazy non-revelation. They tried so hard to make the government the villain even when the characters or their motives make no sense. She's being targeted for recruitment by the Soviets and then suddenly she's British intelligence who kill her because she can't keep secrets. What made her so recruit- able in the first. Meanwhile the completely invisible soviet spies finally appear as the tortured intellectual souls that the left (and I assume the creators of this show) know them to be. Which would explain the revisionist of history casts Britain as the violator of international law and not Nasser whose nationalization of the canal is just delivering the needed comeuppance to the arrogant colonial superpower. I assume this is the first and last season.

I can't blame "The Hour" for the way it's been sold, for all the positive comparisons not just to "Mad Men" but to "State of Play" and "The Wire." But even setting aside all the hyperbole, "The Hour" is pretty flimsy TV drama. With only six episodes, the entire first hour is pretty much wasted on set-up and atmosphere. The character relationships are stock issue, the writing colorless; the is editing nervous yet the pacing is slack. The art direction is fancy-on-the-cheap. I'll be watching episode two this week, but if the show continues as it began, I suspect that I will be missing for episode three.

Behind the Machinations of BBC: A Debut Series from the Brits, August 18, 2011 By Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME) This review is from: Hour (DVD) Summer seems to be test time for new series for the television audience and so far the shows that are coming out of Britain look the most promising. First we had the abbreviated 3 episode appetizer ZEN which in its short run got progressively more interesting and promising and now come THE HOUR from BBC America. The series just debuted in what appeared to be prolonged trailer for the long series that hopefully will continue: the title refers to a television news broadcast that is created before our eyes, the final scenes being a toast to this new venture acting as an overture to what is to come. Overtures to operas usually introduce themes that will appear in the opera that follows once the curtain opens and that is how THE HOUR comes across. This is a time piece set in the 1950s when Cold War-era England was awash in the news of the Suez crisis, one of Britain's sharpest intimations of loss, with a more intimate look at sex, ambition and espionage in the workplace along with the world wide speculation of JFK as a vice presidential candidate in the US. It's a time of unsettling change, except at the BBC, where even driven reporters are assigned to do feel-good newsreels about débutante balls and royal visits. The series opener, written by Bafta Award-winning Abi Morgan, takes us behind the scenes of the launch of a topical news program in London 1956, and introduces a highly competitive, sharp-witted and passionate love triangle at the heart of the series through the lives of enigmatic producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) and her rivals, journalist Freddie Lyon (Ben Wishaw) and anchorman Hector Madden (Dominic West): we will begin to see the decade on the threshold of change - from the ruthless sexual politics behind the polite social façade of the Fifties to the revelations that redefined the world for a new generation. Aside from the behind the scenes views and devious workings of the BBC we also see the beginning of a crime element in which the victim is touted as being part of a robbery while the ever-suspicious and career climbing Freddie sees it as a murder to be investigated. There are 1950s reminders of Debutante Balls, the universal cigarette smoking habits, the 'gentlemen only clubs' where women are not allowed (secondary citizens, you know!), and all the clothes and hats that reek of the 50s. The cast is rich in fine British actors (Juliet Stevenson and Tim Pigott-Smith appear briefly in roles that will likely be expanded, Anna Chancellor is the acid tongued foreign correspondent, Burn Gorman is the suspicious, hatted man, etc), but if were only Ben Wishaw and Romola Garai and Domenic West every week the show would sail. There is a lot of style and sophistication and just the right amount of British intrigue and humor that almost sure that this series will fly. Grady Harp