[DanaC]

I came across a really good review of The Hour in NYDailyNews:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...=entertainment

If you're a fan of high-quality, deliberately paced period drama, you need to check out "The Hour," a BBC mystery thriller set in 1956 London.

On the other hand, if you think "deliberately paced period drama" is just a nice way to say "it puts me to sleep," then "The Hour" probably will do just that.

"The Hour" is set in a British television newsroom, where a new program - excuse me, programme - called "The Hour" is being launched in an attempt to get away from the staid, dry, dull news shows of the past.

The drama revolves around three characters involved in that broadcast.

Dominic West plays Hector Madden, the suave, well-educated, well-bred and well-married fellow who has been hired as the primary anchor.

Romola Garai plays Bel Rowley, who has been hired as the producer. Women just didn't get that kind of position back then, so she's battling the boys while trying to keep her personal life in some sort of balance.

Ben Whishaw plays Freddie Lyon, a sarcastic, exasperated and fanatically committed young journalist who won't quit a story until he has asked all the questions.

Because Freddie is Bel's protegé, she hires him for "The Hour," where his relentlessness plunges him, and ultimately the show, into a dark world of high-stakes international Cold War intrigue.

The characters are similarly elusive, which can make them either frustrating or intriguing.

Freddie is also annoying, which makes him a multidimensional good guy, while Hector can be either evasive or simply aloof. Either way, West underplays him beautifully.

The star, though, is Bel, in whom Garai conveys poignant vulnerability under the smoldering intensity of a Lauren Bacall or Katharine Hepburn.

Her performance alone makes "The Hour" worth watching.