Doctor Who

“Closing Time” Review

September 27th 2011, 10:09pm

A rare dud among this year’s Doctor Who gems, Closing Time for the most part is a by-numbers episode, not just the poorest of this year’s crop but not as good as many of last year’s episodes either.

This is the first appearance of a recurring monster this year (besides minor appearances of sontarans, silurians, cybermen and even weeping angels in minor roles). That’s evidence of the originality of this year’s of stories. But that’s not to say I wouldn’t welcome the occasional appearance of a classic villain if it’s well done. And generally, I love a cybermat. But neither they nor the cybermen were well-served by this episode (and the more we see of cyberconversion the less scary it is). The crashed ship plot was rather pedestrian (and, to me, having new cybermen on Earth in 1986 feels wrong) and insufficient to sustain a story in its own right. Perhaps that’s why we have the other recurring element, the reappearance of Craig from The Lodger to which this is a direct (if inferior) sequel.

I enjoyed James Corden’s performance as Matt Smith’s house-mate a great deal. But with less opportunity to play off the Doctor, he is shriller and more erratic. The baby storyline is a nice progression from when we last met him (“You’ve redecorated. I don’t like it.” “We’ve moved!”) but without the culture-clash elements, the story feels a bit rudderless.

Additionally, the (obviously Moffat-penned) ending also feels bolted on, in the way that the final sequence in The Cold Earth did. Elements of the story arc through this year’s episodes have typically been well-integrated but this stuck out starkly with the kids in the street providing the clunkiest of links.

The real strength of the episode is Matt Smith’s well-judge melancholy performance of the Doctor on the eve of his death. This must be around 200 years, in the Doctor’s timeline, since The God Complex. The moment when he sees Amy and Rory walking through the shop is very affecting; the success Amy has enjoyed modelling conveying effectively the time that has passed for her. There’s a sense, as he chastises himself for being a selfish old man, of how much further he’s fallen since he rose so high. That was there in the performance, but it felt like the writing shied away from it: for Craig to have been converted would have illustrated just how irredeemably toxic the Doctor has become. I can see how that would have been unpalatable for the family audience, but it would have given a mediocre episode meaning. Even revealing the Doctor’s cutesy “I can talk baby” as being a sham (a careful line has been trodden to avoid confirming this) would have exposed how sad and pathetic the Doctor is with no companions.

Instead, this one plays it safe. When Doctor Who is at its best I don’t even notice that I’m watching scenes filmed in the corridors at work. So it can’t be a good sign if, during airing, I’m wondering whether the episode was filmed in Debenhams.

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Doctor Who

“The God Complex”

September 25th 2011, 09:09pm

“So what do Time Lords pray to?” Another episode of such quality can only serve to strengthen my faith in the supreme Moffatt. He’s shown he’s capably of putting together a series of consistently good stories, but with season six he raised the bar, and besides finally addressing the awkward problem of the ill-fitting story arc episodes with an amazingly compelling running story, we’ve had some great stand-alone episodes, including one that for me that has topped everything before. That The God Complex is not quite as strong is no criticism, in any other year it would probably have stood out, but deserves recognition along with the opener and The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People as a superb piece of television.

It’s a beautifully crafted episode in the sense that the clues to the Doctor’s fatal mistake are all in full view on screen from the pre-title sequence up to the moment he realises his terrible error. And, like in The Waters of Mars, it feels like his error has real consequences and not just for him, but for Amy too. Even the device of having only the Doctor hear the Minotaur (“What’s that Sooty? You feel old and you want to die?”) worked well, “I wasn’t talking about me” being so well signalled but brilliantly executed to emphasise the Doctor’s complacency.

It even made me regret not having seen The Horns of Nimon.

This episode is packed with the very stylised montages and shift is point of view that have become an established part of the tapestry of the show – it’s odd to recall how such sequences in Eleventh Hour  (showing a glimpse, a recognition or an association) felt like a jarring departure from the established style. And while this is certainly his best episode to date, Toby Whithouse’s episodes are never short of gags and this had some cracking one liners in it (“did you just say ‘it’s okay, we’re nice?’”).

With respect to accumulating companions, the Doctor has always happened upon someone with precisely the requisite qualities at just the time when there’s a vacancy, so it’s lovely to see his reaction to Rita: clever, sarcastic, devout and brave. “She’s good. Amy, with regret, you’ve fired.” Rita would have made a fantastic companion, so and it’s another indicator of the quality of this story that it can call upon the writing and performance that could have established a long-term character purely to serve this 45-mintues piece.

The departure of companions is always hugely problematic, too. It’s always difficult to write them out in a way that makes sense of their leaving (or the Doctor’s leaving them), as is made explicit “you can’t just drop me off like we shared a cab” but “what’s the alternative? Me standing over your broken body?”. So again, it’s an accomplishment that one of the best companion departure scenes is here, despite the fact I very much doubt that this is the last of Amy and Rory (I’ve seen no spoilers, don’t tell me whether I’m right or wrong). But it’s necessary because the act of destroying Amy’s faith in him is a necessary consequence of the Doctor’s actions in this episode if the resolution to carefully built up to is to have any meaning.

So, the big unanswered question: what did the Doctor see in his room? We heard the cloister bell, and the popular theory online seems to be it was the Doctor (as suggested by the line “Who else?”). There were too rooms we did see in the episode that weren’t accounted for as being the fears of a known character: the PE teacher who the Doctor saw, and the clown, who he didn’t. Could it be the clown? It’s a long shot, unless it’s connected with @lone_locust’s Phantom Jester theory. I’m not so sure, but for me the really interesting question is Amy’s, since it’s not the fear but the faith that matters here. So what does the Doctor believe in?

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Doctor Who

“Torchwood: The Blood Line” Review

September 20th 2011, 10:09pm

Almost anything I write about Miracle Day is going to sound like the damnation of faint praise. In fact I found The Blood Line a satisfying, if at times completely ludicrous, conclusion to this semi-epic story. It’s just that Miracle Day turned out not to be, like its predecessor, gut-wrenchingly harrowing and tragic; rather it was delightfully barking.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with Miracle Day from the start; expecting another Children of Earth would have set the bar impossibly high. But Miracle Day didn’t always  seem quite sure what it wanted to be, either. The Miracle Day concept was squandered: the promise of a worthy successor to CofE, a philosophical investigation into the social aspects of the end of death were hinted at but never delivered until finally being killed off, along with Dr Juarez, about half way through when death was reinvented; at which point the focus switched to erratic action thriller. The influences of shows like 24 and particularly Heroes were evident (I’d hoped it would rather take more from House and The West Wing) but for all that by the last couple of episodes, it was quite a thrilling thriller.

The pacing certainly suffered from the lack of any evident threat or tangible antagonists, but the central concept of Torchwood fighting an entirely terrestrial menace was refreshing. The Three Families were almost an anti-Torchwood, doing the same kind of work for profit (rather than for “saving the Earth” or whatever the TW mission statement actually is). I’m not sure I entirely welcome their being set up as the recurring villains should Torchwood continue, but they served the story well in this episode. The global premise finally felt justified, with our team split across other sides of the world whilst still linked by The Blessing. And I like the way the Racnoss problem was acknowledged – sometimes a shrug is more convincing than a glib explanation that amounts to little more than an ill-thought out sleight of hand.

As it hurtled along, often veering into the laughably absurd (the lift-fight, Rex’s transfusion) I found myself getting more and more confused in trying to draw a line between where the nonsense began and ended. How could Rex, with a punctured heart and a body full of someone else’s blood have survived when Esther, with a single gunshot wound, didn’t? Because, it turned out, he’s got all immortal – makes sense. But how did that happen – nonsense? Because The Blessing reversed the mortal status Jack and humanity, and was keyed into Jack’s blood which Rex was full of – makes sense. But why did making humans immortal mean Jack became mortal in the first place? Nonsense. In the end I just sat back and accepted it all. Making Rex immortal was surprising and funny, at the time, but looks like an odd decision should Torchwood continue… Do we need two immortals striding around? Mind you, I thought one was too many.

Most surprisingly of all, it was upbeat and liberally seeded with teasers for Torchwood 5.

Children of Earth ended on a low and a high. Low in the sense of reaching a nadir of misanthropy,  but a high in brilliant written and executed drama; it felt like an ending both because it had so totally destroyed Torchwood in every sense and because it would have been a triumphant note to end on. But despite that, RTD made it clear he was ready to do more, and I wanted to see it because it had been so good. Now both Davies and Starz have been lukewarm on whether Torchwood might come back, it was a surprise to see so many preparations made… I enjoyed Miracle Day enough to want to see Torchwood come back, and it would be a shame to leave it at this point with so many loose ends and so much potential to be realised. There have been some great new writers working on it this season, and knowing what to expect, when I come to watch Miracle Day again in a year or two I expect to enjoy it more (watching over a couple of weeks rather than a couple of months may be a better experience too). And for the future, for curiosity’s sake I’d love to see what becomes of Torchwood if there’s another format shift. But if another Miracle Day is what’s on offer is more of the same that’s fine with me.

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Doctor Who

“Torchwood: The Gathering” Review

September 14th 2011, 09:09pm

Two months later.

There it is. The thing that makes a show that uniquely offers the pleasure of Bill Pullman being hit by a pan in Swansea (and other such surreal spectacles) simultaneously disappointing is the lack of structure. Is it a series (self contained episodes) or is it a serial? Series 1 & 2 were the former, C of E the latter but with MD sometimes it’s hard to tell.

I don’t have a problem with “two months later” per se (it’s happened before in Battlestar Galactica and The Last of the Timelords) but in the penultimate episode (and after how long, exactly… just how long ago was The Miracle?) it feels like another way to dissipate any residual momentum. C of E announced its intention to tell one day per episode from the beginning. I’m not saying this should follow the same pattern, but… 5 episodes of on the run from the CIA exposing the death camps, then “2 months later” prior to the second set of 5 episodes back with the CIA hunting for The Families would have been fine, as would – for example – going for each episode telling a different aspect of how society is coping with the End of Death, or anything else. Basically anything but this series of false starts.

And how is society coping with the End of Death? After “2 months” I’d like to know, but all we get is a bit of dialogue referring to economic depression and immigration controls. In fact all the way through Miracle Day we’ve been teased with hints of great stories to be told about the effect of dying becoming impossible; but rather than deciding to explore them they’ve been left as throwaway comments and hints. And forgive me for getting into a bit of a post-mortem of Miracle Day before it’s even dead (assuming mortality returns next week) but even the concept of the End of Death hasn’t been followed through, with category 1s and incineration fudging the issue. After all, how can Rex have had is heart perforated and still function when a heart attack renders Mr Cooper a vegetable? How does Danes avoid category 1-ness, and the the suicide bomber remain conscious in The New World? I can see that the absence of the possibility of death removes the jeopardy that gives many situations drama, but what a shame to immitate it rather than getting creative in defining new threats and power plays. Also (I’ll get onto the episode in a moment, honest) where is the jeopardy in the Miracle Day scenario? In C of E we knew what could happen and when, unless it was avoided. But if 2 months can pass and everything’s still basically ticking over, why don’t our heroes just take another 2 months off? Sure, the economy dip a bit further and a few more countries might shut their borders, but it’s not the end of the world…

So: The Gathering.

  • We do, at least, discover what The Blessing is (despite the potential continuity issues this may cause with Inferno and The Runaway Bride) and belatedly return to Shanghai.
  • Danes finally gets to do something (i.e. receive a pan to the face) but there’d better be an excellent reason why he is at the centre of this Miracle next week, and not just an incidental character, because that’s what he’s been reduced to now.
  • Despite the economic woes and cost of disposing of category 1s, there still seem to be plenty of resources available to hunting down Gwen’s dad even though he places no burden whatsoever on the public purse.
  • Jack can heal, now, but in episode 1 he seemed to say he couldn’t (or was he just noting he was healing it normal speed, rather than super fast?)
  • There’s a crack about the wife of an R. Williams not taking his wife’s name, and it’s not Mr Pond.
  • Bread is delivered by Valley Bara. Is this a crossover with the wonderful Baker Boys?

Oh, and a Thermal Imaging App? No hardware, then, just uses the standard camera?

I should stop nitpicking. It’s not a bad episode (actually I enjoyed it), and little flaws such as this are not the problem. It’s frustrating that as the penultimate episode of Miracle Day it could – and should – have been so much better. It didn’t even have a cliffhanger.

One more to go.

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Doctor Who

“The Girl Who Waited” Review

September 11th 2011, 10:09pm

Any attempt I make at a critical analysis of this episode is doomed to failure.

I think this episode may have been entirely without flaw.

This is not just my favourite non-Moffat penned story: at the moment it is simply my favourite episode of Doctor Who.

Recognisably my Doctor Who, the same show I watched as a small child, back in 1982, this was much cleaner yet darker, and more affecting. Having avoided time travel as a plot device, under Moffat’s stewardship we’ve explored paradoxes and alternative timelines galore (eg. The Pandorica Opens and Big Bang) but what sets this apart is the unflinching focus on the human consequence, pared down to the heartbreaking core.

And Karen Gillan’s performance.

Gillan is amazing in this. The 55(ish) year old Amy is so well characterised that from the moment the story bravely makes a complete switch from day 1 in “two streams” to Rory discovering his abandoned wife 34 years later, I wanted so much for her to survive as ‘our’ Amy (despite knowing how unlikely it was the Gillan would continue to play the older version of herself). Gillan is remarkable, an astonishing actress.

It seemed impossible that an emotionally satisfying resolution could be wrought, but devastating as it was the proof of “Rule 1″ was awful perfection. There were so many beautiful touches in the writing (by @TomMacWriter, author of Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel) and all of the performances in what was essentially a three-hander that I shall not even begin to list them, but I will mention the superb design work. I’m not a fan of the new TARDIS interior, but even here some of the details and photography were sublime, while the blending of the studio sets and the sequences shot in Dyffryn Gardens created a distinctive atmosphere.

This year’s Doctor Who is remarkable. The first year of Moffat’s tenure was notable for its consistency. Now after having reinvented the format with that breathtaking opening two parter, The Doctor’s Wife and the traditional but first rate Rebel Flesh/Almost People we have a story that exceeds all.

I’ve only watched the episode once, and it coincided with my seeming to have something in my eye; I may need to pause and recover before I watch it again.

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Doctor Who

“Night Terrors” Review

September 11th 2011, 08:09pm

It feels like a long time since we’ve spent an episode on present day Earth (The Lodger?). It feels even longer ago that we used to return there every third episode or so, to catch up with Rose/Martha/Donna’s family (presumably Amy gets to cram all her catching up when the Doctor periodically dumps her in Leadworth, and anyway gets to bring her husband in the TARDIS, so it’s no surprise she’d rather have “planets and history and stuff”). Where the grimy reality of the Powell estate used to be shot with an eye for normality and, er, “Earthiness” even the litter strewn streets have taken on the fairy tail alien feel of Moff-Who (helped immensely by some beautifully photography revelling in symmetry). It was this “otherness” that made the simple pleasure of seeing the Doctor, Amy and Rory knocking on doors so enjoyable. Conversely, as the narrative is gradually translated into the more timeless dollhouse locations it lost a little of that charm. Despite that, this was a very strong episode (allaying a concern I had since it came from Mark Gatiss who penned the only real clunker early in the last series).

The setting – and story – was such that it was easy to imagine how it might have slotted into the Tenth Doctor’s era (indeed, it was reminiscent in some way of Fear Her though, thankfully, vastly superior). Matt Smith’s edgy performance, evident in the way he aggressively continues to make tea when asked to leave, highlights the differences in the way it is realised.

When I first started watching The X-Files I always looked forward to the conspiracy episodes, and after last week Doctor Who I started to feel I so much wanted another River episode we’d just be killing time until the next one. But just as I later came to appreciate Mulder and Scully’s more routine Monster of the Week investigations, this diverting episode showed just how consistently strong this series is proving to be.

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Doctor Who

“Torchwood: The End of the Road” Review

September 8th 2011, 08:09pm

What was the point of that? Most of the developments in episode eight of Miracle Day had me asking that question. The momentum from the flashback episode was instantly squandered as Angelo’s involvement with morphic immortality fields proved to be tangential, and the kidnapping of Gwen’s family part of a sideshow.

Torchwood is back with the CIA, who are compromised by infiltrators. What was the point of that?

Newly introduced and reintroduced characters Olivia Colasanto and Brian Friedkin are de-introduced. What what the point of that?

The Danes/Kitzinger story is back, but remains in its rather separate little bubble. And the episode culminates with the depressingly useless Esther wailing “I don’t know what to do”. So what’s new?

There were a few enjoyable tidbits in the episode. Despite the CIA being generally rather useless, its reintroduction brought along Allen Shapiro with his amusing insistence on deporting the “English girl” Gwen. And there was a fabulously touching reference to Ianto. It was written by Ryan Scott with Jane Espenson (the latter apparently having done the most writing on this series); Ryan Scott penned the recent radio play Torchwood: Submission, a very traditional tale with some clunky dialogue and poorly executed radio action but also some captivating imagery. The End of the Road wasn’t a poor episode, it was just that with only a couple of episodes ahead, it seemed strange to be throttling back to idle again. It seems to me that so far Miracle Day could have told with just the first episode, the House-style airborne episode and Categories of Life; with Immortal Sin too good to miss, despite its irrelevance to the story. And some sort of conclusion…

John Fay, the other main writer with RTD on Children of Earth, penned the next one. I’m hoping for something better than satisfactory. Well, I’m an optimist.

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Doctor Who

“Let’s Kill Hitler” Review

September 4th 2011, 04:09pm

Daylight. For the first time since Utah, there’s daylight. That reflects the lighter tone in this densely packed story that ends the Summer hiatus in series 32 (or heralds the arrival of series 6b, depending on your personal preferences) and that’s despite the war criminals and attempted assassinations that crop up with astonishing frequency.

Let’s Kill Hitler promises the title of the episode, though we were warned that was misleading: Moffat admitted this would be a straight follow on from A Good Man Goes to War. But it wasn’t really that either; this was simply a River story, picking up on that (in)famous revelation at the end of the first half season concerning River’s identity.

I was rather disappointed the first time I watched this. It wasn’t a bad episode, but it felt the weakest so far by the high standards this series; I focused on the flaws and the overloaded plot (I think there are about 4 episodes’ worth of story in here: looking for Melody, the Hitler story, the robot with the miniaturised crew, and finding River). On second viewing I’m sure I was overly harsh; it’s hugely entertaining and there isn’t a moment on when the action doesn’t roll along. I remember seeing an interview where Moffat explained his reason for the horse on the spaceship in The Girl in the Fireplace was to grab the interest of viewers just in from the pub; a philosophy that he’s clearly applied to keeping the viewer on their toes through this. The flaws that bugged me weren’t terminal, some were small things (why would the Teselecta react to Rory’s “heil”?) while other niggles connected to the larger plot (if Melody is this ultimate weapon, why such pedestrian assassination techniques?) but always with the possibility that they might be explained away.

What I loved about this episode was the way it perfectly reflects Silence in the Library as the diametrically opposite point in the Doctor and River’s meetings. Her total devotion to him then counterpoints his absolute faith in her now; for each of them at the other end of the scale this commitment is puzzling and bewildering. I’m more and more in awe of Moffat’s handling of the non-linear relationship between the Doctor and River each time they meet. It’s reflected in River’s name which I speculated before came from a time in the Gamma forest, but it’s actually a Timey Wimey thing: The Doctor gave her that name, because River told him that was her name. Lorna just provided the link. The River regeneration is all about her making the choice of who she wants to become.

Most of my other River/Melody series get shut down fairly quickly: the little girl from the start of the series is River. Baked in the TARDIS, Melody has a time head. She is the child of the TARDIS. (There’s still the question of how older River doesn’t recognise young Melody’s space suit, and Moffat’s hint to revisit “The Silence in the Library” hasn’t helped me with that.) The theory that River the Doctor’s mother hasn’t been totally squashed, but I now rather hope she isn’t. The Doctor’s dedication to her in this episode is all the more astounding and touching if she is just River/Melody. Perhaps this will become clearer when we discover how River learns to read Gallifreyan? Also we still have the question of how Melody knows who her parents are: if she was given this information to allow her to get close to the Doctor when he returned for Amy, why hasn’t she met him before? (“Not doing weddings” is barely a reason not to attempt her mission.) We get no more of Lorna (she’s not River, she’s not a weapon) but might we see her again in the Gamma Forest? This other girl who waited?

And a new question: the Doctor says always waste time when you have none. In one scene there are 32 minutes remaining, in the next the first mention is of 3. Where was the Doctor in-between?

The design in this episode is superb: it simply looks fantastic. Swansea as 1938 Berlin would have seemed so unlikely the week before. I love the Doctor’s new coat, too, a huge improvement on his costume.

Moffat doesn’t seem capable of resisting the sly continuity references: the Temporal State of Grace is “a clever lie”, and the 12 regeneration limit that’s been exercising fandom has been neatly fudged (and in good time, since we still had 2 more doctors in the bank, as it were). But there’s a whole new issue around Time Lord (or just Time Baby?) ageing with River’s throwaway comment about losing a few years. Apparently an indulgent in joke to explain a production quirk (like Romana trying out new bodies in Destiny of the Daleks) I suspect it may have been there for a deeper reason: explaining how Mels aged at the same speed as Rory and Amy by suggesting not that Time Lords age slowly, but that they can age deliberately.

One final reason why I’ve re-evaluated this episode: fine performances. Nina Toussaint-White hits a perfect balance with just enough River in it to convince. Alex Kingston really gets to let rip in this one. And Matt Smith is, again, amazing: just look again at his face as he repeats the line: “give them hell”. But the emotional high-point in this episode for me followed a concern that, after the emotional extremes so firmly rung out by RTD, Amy’s reaction to discovering her pregnancy and losing her baby was just to muted. In her reaction to facing death, believing her friend the Doctor dead, her daughter having killed him, and with Rory in her arms, the words “I love you” are so chilling filled with a kind of resigned peace.

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Doctor Who

“Torchwood: Immortal Sins” Review

August 25th 2011, 09:08pm

Seven episodes in Torchwood has suddenly gone “classic”, with a flashback episode reminiscent of Small Worlds or Fragments from Jane Epsenson, but it is (at least for the first 40 minutes) very, very good. It’s another crazy tonal shift, too, for a series which began with a global epic conspiracy saga with myriad new plot strands to focus down on what is essential a Harkness solo set in an almost comic book evocation of the prohibition era.

While “classic” Torchwood (the first two series) was never really to my taste, there were a few good stories told (in the second series especially) and plenty of potential that was never quite realised in the flashbacks to Jack’s life from 1879 through to the present day. Although what we are seeing in this episode is clearly designed to lay the foundations for the endgame, it’s a stand-alone story in its own right; there’s even a Torchwood mission which is, for once, conducted successfully. (Quite who would want to manipulate Earth’s history in this way is frustrating unlikely to be revealed, but we’ll overlook that since we actually get our first sight of something alien…)  It consolidates this series’ position as being not so much pure Children of Earth as a hybrid with its predecessor series, and if I’m not entirely enthusiastic about that in general, this episode shows that where it’s veering closer to the earlier versions in style it is still thankfully heading in the opposite direction in terms of quality.

The other major strand in this episode is the Jack/Gwen two-hander scenes in the car, which crackle with tension. At the end of last week I was fearful there would be a meal made of Gwen’s dilemma: but Espenson has her zap Jack unconscious within the first five minutes; instead we get a powerfully honest interchange that has all the more resonance when you think how far Gwen has come since those early days of trying to shoot straight in The Hub range with Jack’s hand on her arse.

It was certainly fortunate that I was watching this one alone and that no-one witnessed my “Jack mentioned The Doctor” dance. It’s also a pleasure to see Jack operating alone. There’s even a hint of the lone chancer we were first introduced to in The Empty Child, albeit with a greater sense of responsibility now. For me, the only real weak point in the episode was the cop-out ending. Rex and Esther were credited with more gumption than they had hitherto indicated they possessed, and the cliff-hanger reveal (like the PhiCorp origins moment) was predictable from early in the episode. Plus any resolution that puts a firearm in the hands of PC Andy counts as pushing it, in my book. Despite that, this is the kind of new direction the series has been needed to sustain its 10 episode arc, and it’s a delight that Torchwood has not lost the power to surprise.

NB. I couldn’t work out which 10 seconds would get cut in last week’s episode. It would have surprised me less had this one been edited!

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Film, TV & Radio

“The Hour” Review

August 25th 2011, 08:08pm

For some reason, a the number of really great political thrillers with disappointing endings (Edge of Darkness, State of Play, The Shadow Line, The Hour) outnumber those that keep on building to a crescendo at the final moment (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Children of Earth). That’s not to condemn those in the former class, which are better than many solidly structured but inferior pieces. It’s not about how good the final episode is in its own right, it’s whether it exceeds the episode it succeeds, and fulfils the promise of the series. And the problem with the final episode of The Hour is that although it builds to a crescendo, it’s emotional inflation, not real growth, a dotcom bubble buoyed by mawkish self-satisfaction.

Frustratingly, this wasn’t even a failure of plot. From the beginning, The Hour oozed class from every pore. It was beautifully shot, with a fabulous eye for period authenticity, a truly terrific jazz score (CD release, please?) and an amazing cast. In fact, I’ll divert for a moment to marvel at an ensemble not only whose leads were magnificent, but featuring in supporting roles Tim Piggot-Smith (is he even capable of giving a performance that’s less than perfect?), Julian Rhind-Tutt (whose almost steals the show, does his versatility know no bounds?) and Anton Lesser (who up to now I’ve only heard in audio performances, but must be one of my favourite actors working). With all that to enjoy, The Hour could begin as slowly as it wished, and still be worth watching for the ambience. However, a solidly plotted thriller soon emerged to underpin the show, set against the intriguing backdrop of Eden’s disastrous handling of the Suez crisis, and I found myself engrossed. Mid-way through, I was completely gripped, and the final episode hurtled up to soon.

Spoilers follow…. Show ▼

Ultimately this mushiness impairs the finale, which is poor by comparison with its predecessors episodes. So whilst it is a good show, it feels disappointing because greater things were promised than ultimately, in the final hour, were realised. Which is a shame, because overall I’ve enjoyed the six hours of The Hour very much indeed.


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