The Hour - series 2

[Guest]

Is anyone else finding this such an excellent series? Totally spellbinding..the attention to period detail first rate, acting performances excellent (although I do wish someone would ask Peter Capaldi to stop mumbling). Lighting spot on. Flawless.

[Pabmusic]

Yes, I agree. So far, I'd rate this series even better than the first.

[aeolium]

the attention to period detail first rate

I'm not sure. Although I was too young to see any 1950s programmes, and we didn't even have a TV until well into the 1960s, I get the feeling that the kind of approach of the characters involved in "The Hour" is much more that of the later 1960s than the very conservative and still rather establishment style of the 1950s (as associated with voices like Leslie Mitchell's and Alvar Lidell's) and that some of the stories they are shown as running would not even have been on the radar of the 1950s BBC. However, I'm happy to be corrected by those with real experience of the TV of that period. Also, would Bel really be wearing those flamboyant dresses at work - surely a more conservative style would have been required?

It's quite enjoyable, but for me there is always a nagging feeling that despite the concern for period authenticity, more modern ideas about hard-hitting and cutting-edge documentary programming (perhaps as a kind of wish-fulfilment) are being anachronistically imported into a different world that really didn't look at things in that way (it's also a general problem I have with historical drama and historical novels).

[Pabmusic]

... for me there is always a nagging feeling that despite the concern for period authenticity, more modern ideas about hard-hitting and cutting-edge documentary programming (perhaps as a kind of wish-fulfilment) are being anachronistically imported into a different world that really didn't look at things in that way (it's also a general problem I have with historical drama and historical novels).

Food for thought. I do find that these 'retro' programmes have to have a background of 'issues of the day' (in the present case, race relations and corruption in the Met). Inspector Gently suffers in this way, and it does give the impression that there were constant struggles between dinosaurs and the enlightened few, which is not quite how I recall the 60s and 70s, at least.

However, I can accept the desire to overdo the historical context, because the storylines, acting and production are so good.