Review: The Hour - Season Two, Episode Two

Spoiler-filled thoughts on Season Two, Episode Two of The Hour after the jump:

So maybe this episode of The Hour tried to do a little bit too much. It felt weirdly disjointed in the way other episodes never have; the two major plotlines of the fascists attacking Freddie’s wife and Hector managing to beat the charge of assaulting Kiki never coalescing in the way The Hour has managed to do so well in the past. There’s still a sense that the writers are setting the table for episodes to come, but episodes like this one mean they’ll have to really stick the landing.

That’s not to say the show’s eighth episode was bad (far from it), but it just wasn’t at the standard we normally expect from The Hour. I enjoyed watching Bel Rowley investigate what seems to be some sort of prostitution ring; I enjoyed watching Freddie prove his point about how it’s better to give violent radicals enough rope rather than let their violent tendencies fester in the shadows. I particularly enjoyed watching Hector go through the ringer only to slowly drift back to the place where all the trouble started in the first place, and I thought Dominic West played all his scenes beautifully.

Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time following Marnie’s exploits as the possible star of her own television show and the various machinations of Kiki and her customers and owners. These scenes are fine, but suffer greatly from not featuring any characters we met in Season One and feel less immediate and important as a result. That’s why it all feels like table setting: we know that this will eventually affect the characters we care about, but it’s very much just swirling loosely about them at the moment.

Peter Capaldi continues to do fine work (I particularly liked his short, sharp chastising of the young fascist) and all the main cast continue to be excellent. I just wish this season of The Hour was as flat out intriguing as Season One was, and if it can’t be, that it would at least spend more time with the people we care about.

Random Thoughts:

Anna Chancellor and Oona Chaplin continue to do excellent work on the sidelines of the show; unfortunately Lix’s history with Capaldi’s character is another one of those plotlines being very slowly set up for what I assume will be a gangbuster final three episodes. Hopefully.

I want Ben Whishaw’s beard back, but I guess being on TV in the fifties put paid to that idea.

Dominic West’s dumbfounded expression when the police arrived at his door was a thing of beauty; a nice bit of acting that portrayed both his innocence and guilt at the same time.

I hope The Hour doesn’t wind up anytime soon, but if it does, Romola Garai should be on all the shows. She’s so fantastic in this show, even when her character motivation is a tad on the muddy side.