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quinaraI haven't really mentioned my love of this to anyone but ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shapinglight, I don't think, but then I saw that penny_lane_42 had posted her thoughts and they got me thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. And then I was going to comment on your post, Lirazel, but everything got long and tangential, so I'm here instead!
What I was most interested in when readingpenny_lane_42's thoughts was the idea that the programme was about the Cold War, because that hadn't really occurred to me at all. I suppose it is the Cold War really, but what I see when I watch The Hour, I now realise, is more a portrait of the country living in the long shadow of the Second World War (which I would hesitantly suggest the Suez Crisis belongs in?). The Soviets are around because the Soviets are around, but otherwise I'm watching a generation of people who've only in the last two years seen the end of rationing, who've seen Great War memorials have an extra slab fitted and all the extra names inscribed, who are afraid of the peaceful world collapsing around them just like it did for their parents in the thirties. A generation where everyone, including Marnie Madden, is willing to eat crappy fish paste sandwiches in a grotty BBC canteen.
This may just be because Freddie's dad breaks my heart every second he's on screen (dementia, says the blurb on the BBC; if there isn't any shellshock in there as well then I'm a purple teacosy), but I cannot forget the way he looked at Hector('s posture), heard his voice (and bless Robert Demeger, he even managed to convince me Dominic West's accent was right) and could say nothing but 'yes, Captain'. Freddie's left looking after him like all the other refugee children who've at last become relatively unscathed adults - and it leaves him still a child, it seems to me (just look at the way all his peers have parents rather than children - Thomas Kish's children were a strange anomaly, and shot as such). He's essentially now living out all the spy-catching games he probably played as a twelve year old, watching strangers on buses and looking for messages in magazines. He's drawn into the mystery by the connections he made during the war, as a result of Lord Elms' kindness (who himself seems utterly tired and jaded by the last fifty years). And he only has one day suit (what need is there for another?).
Bel and Lix, too, I can't see as anything but people who remember when it was the women holding communities together, gaining competency in all sorts of things, only to have that sense of position snatched away from them at practically every turn. Bel is betrayed (inevitably?) by Clarence; Lix was very pointedly stuck (back?) on a piddly little typist's desk until she won something sensible from Freddie in their previous newsroom.
As for Hector, he (like everyone else) just shows also the social/class upheaval that has gone on. Privileged to nth, but doesn't even question whether Freddie and his family can be his equal (or better), whether people from the West Indies should be allowed to stay in hotels and whether gay people deserve respect. He's almost entirely at odds with the Old World, even the dinner suits.
What strikes me, really, about The Hour, I suppose, is almost a sense of fragility. Where no one's quite sure that things are all right, and they need to know the truth because of that. They're scared that if they wait for the politicians to tell them what's going on, then conscription will start back up before there's any time to stop it. Along with a mild subconscious notion that maybe Britain owes the Commonwealth more than it deserves from them and that the Empire crumbling may be a fair price for peace.
The Radio Times might think that's anachronistic. Or something. But the show still feels like the fifties I've heard about. I believe these people would stop their cars on the motorway and stand for two minutes silence on Remembrance Day. Plus, everyone's great. Especially Jessica Hynes, who was wonderful in the last episode and whom I wish hadn't just been a cameo...
All in all, I might well have to get the DVD.
shapinglight, I don't think, but then I saw that penny_lane_42 had posted her thoughts and they got me thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. And then I was going to comment on your post, Lirazel, but everything got long and tangential, so I'm here instead!What I was most interested in when reading
penny_lane_42's thoughts was the idea that the programme was about the Cold War, because that hadn't really occurred to me at all. I suppose it is the Cold War really, but what I see when I watch The Hour, I now realise, is more a portrait of the country living in the long shadow of the Second World War (which I would hesitantly suggest the Suez Crisis belongs in?). The Soviets are around because the Soviets are around, but otherwise I'm watching a generation of people who've only in the last two years seen the end of rationing, who've seen Great War memorials have an extra slab fitted and all the extra names inscribed, who are afraid of the peaceful world collapsing around them just like it did for their parents in the thirties. A generation where everyone, including Marnie Madden, is willing to eat crappy fish paste sandwiches in a grotty BBC canteen.This may just be because Freddie's dad breaks my heart every second he's on screen (dementia, says the blurb on the BBC; if there isn't any shellshock in there as well then I'm a purple teacosy), but I cannot forget the way he looked at Hector('s posture), heard his voice (and bless Robert Demeger, he even managed to convince me Dominic West's accent was right) and could say nothing but 'yes, Captain'. Freddie's left looking after him like all the other refugee children who've at last become relatively unscathed adults - and it leaves him still a child, it seems to me (just look at the way all his peers have parents rather than children - Thomas Kish's children were a strange anomaly, and shot as such). He's essentially now living out all the spy-catching games he probably played as a twelve year old, watching strangers on buses and looking for messages in magazines. He's drawn into the mystery by the connections he made during the war, as a result of Lord Elms' kindness (who himself seems utterly tired and jaded by the last fifty years). And he only has one day suit (what need is there for another?).
Bel and Lix, too, I can't see as anything but people who remember when it was the women holding communities together, gaining competency in all sorts of things, only to have that sense of position snatched away from them at practically every turn. Bel is betrayed (inevitably?) by Clarence; Lix was very pointedly stuck (back?) on a piddly little typist's desk until she won something sensible from Freddie in their previous newsroom.
As for Hector, he (like everyone else) just shows also the social/class upheaval that has gone on. Privileged to nth, but doesn't even question whether Freddie and his family can be his equal (or better), whether people from the West Indies should be allowed to stay in hotels and whether gay people deserve respect. He's almost entirely at odds with the Old World, even the dinner suits.
What strikes me, really, about The Hour, I suppose, is almost a sense of fragility. Where no one's quite sure that things are all right, and they need to know the truth because of that. They're scared that if they wait for the politicians to tell them what's going on, then conscription will start back up before there's any time to stop it. Along with a mild subconscious notion that maybe Britain owes the Commonwealth more than it deserves from them and that the Empire crumbling may be a fair price for peace.
The Radio Times might think that's anachronistic. Or something. But the show still feels like the fifties I've heard about. I believe these people would stop their cars on the motorway and stand for two minutes silence on Remembrance Day. Plus, everyone's great. Especially Jessica Hynes, who was wonderful in the last episode and whom I wish hadn't just been a cameo...
All in all, I might well have to get the DVD.