The Hour

Blending journalistic and romantic drama with espionage thrills, The Hour is a compelling series about integrity, ambition, and the heavy prices they carry. It's 1956, the eve of the Suez Canal crisis, and rising TV producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) finds her authority as head of BBC news program The Hour threatened by her complicated relationships with rebellious journalist and best friend, Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw), and the show's aristocratic, married anchor, Hector Madden (Dominic West). The unfolding Suez crisis, which Bel and her opinionated team are not-so-subtly warned to stay away from by a powerful government adviser (Julian Rhind-Tutt), underscores the contemporary dilemmas of this retro series; government censorship colliding with journalistic freedom, solo military engagements in the face of world opposition, the beginning of the end of a global superpower's reign. Each episode, filled with jazzy music cues, plummy British accents, and subtext-laden dialogue (playwright/screenwriter Abi Morgan is the series creator and sole scribe), skillfully balances a revolving door of complex plots and personal entanglements. Meanwhile, the uniformly talented cast breathes life—and lots of cigarette smoke—into deeply intelligent, richly layered characters. It's a snapshot of a world, country, and journalistic institution in flux, where no one knows what to do except what they feel is right.