Bienvenue chez les normands!

TRANSLATION OF A FRENCH NEWSPAPER« LE MONDE » ARTICLE
DATED 08/08/2011

The-Hour-e1312743910392.png
-

The Hour – Not to mix up with Mad Men

Appearances are deceptive. The Hour, the new BBC series, could look like an answer that the
Britons could have brought to the international success of Mad Men, whose resumption is
planned in may 2012 with an expected fifth season. There are likenesses between Matthew
Weiner’s creation and Abi Morgan’s one, actually on broadcasting on the English public
service.

Although present, these likenesses remain at the surface of the narrative which is a lot more a
thriller than the research about habits and behaviors of one period. There is, first, the
historical closeness. The Hour takes place in London, in 1956, during the Suez Canal crisis.
Mad Men starts in 1960. The historical context is partially used as a backdrop and, obviously,
people smoke and drink relentlessly.

Dominic West (Jimmy Mc Nulty in The Wire) has a vague resemblance with Jon Hamm.
Plastered-down hair and parting drawn with a ruler. The costumes and the ambiance are
restored with a certain details concern whereas the journalist Bel Rowley (Romola Garaï) tries
to put in for herself a place in an universe ruled by the men, as Peggy Olson does inside the
Sterling Cooper Agency.

All the similarities maybe demand a small effort from the viewer not to linger on a
comparison between the British series and Mad Men. Because the late fifties London has not
a lot of things to do with the early sixties New York. We are in the television world and not
any longer in the advertising one and the real interest resides in two other things: the first one

is the Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw)’s character, Bel’s colleague and best friend, who persists
in keeping up the tradition of an investigating journalism, fulfilling his counter-power role.

The second thing is that the narrative links together two stories: the first one is the starting up
of a news TV show named The Hour (the 60 minutes you can’t miss in the week), the second
one is the inquiry is about to carry on about the murder of an academic throat slit in the
underground.

We find back here (maybe a little bit too much?) the classic theme of the plot organized by
the Power always perceived as a threat to the expression freedom and, therefore, to the
democracy. The Britons have often explored this matter which is recurrent in their television
productions. We may regret a slight lack of originality about on this plane.

Six episodes are forecasted for this 1st season and the rhythm is relatively sustained whereas
the two stories unfold simultaneously and that Lyon goes from one to the other: he takes part
into the creation of The Hour while carrying on his own enquiry about the murder that the
police consider a robbery aggression which would have tragically ended.

We penetrate into what goes on behind the TV scenes but this is not the most important. The
enigma which implicates the British Intelligence Service holds up more the attention. First
relegated to a position of secondary importance, it occupies few by few a more and more
significant place and maintains a dramatic effect. The plot reality which appears as Lyon
accumulates the indices gets framed into a mirror in front of the appearances show laid down
by the television.

AT LAST AND THIS IS ONE QUALITY OF THE SERIES, BEN WHISHAW, THE
HEROE OF “THE PERFUME, STORY OF A MURDERER” ADAPTED FROM THE
PATRICK SÜSKIND’S NOVEL IN 2006 IS EXCELLENT IN HIS ROLE OF AN
INVESTIGATION JOURNALIST WHO DOESN’T CARE PROPRIETIES AND
GOOD MANNERS. AND WHO IS LIVING ONLY TO UNEARTH THE “GOOD
STORY”. CONCERNING DOMINIC WEST, HE SHOWS AN UNEXPECTED
COMPOSITION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE HOST WITH THE
ADVERTISING SMILE. ROMOLA GARAÏ COMPLETES FAVOURABLY THE
CASTING IN THE ROLE OF A YOUNG AMBITIOUS WOMAN WHO TRIES TO
MAKE AKNOWLEDGE HER COMPETENCE BY THE MEN.