All style and no substance and actually not very
much style at that.
The Hour is desperately shooting for Mad Men and painfully failing. I’d hoped that after the limp mess
that concluded the first series they’d have turned it around, but it really
doesn’t look like it. This episode was flat and wet and kind of dull and all
over the place. I want to like this
show really badly but it’s just letting me down.
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| You can look mad all you want, it's still true. |
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| Heartbreaking: A Betty Draper if ever I saw one. These silent scenes were ones the show actually did well. |
At
the beginning of this episode, The Hour
(the in-show show) is in trouble. It is made extremely obvious that this is
because it doesn’t have Freddie in it (“There’s a certain something… lacking.
Edge. Bite.” Yes yes yes just bring him back already.) Hector has morphed
utterly into a second-rate Don Draper. He’s turning up late for work every day
and going out drinking in nightclubs every night, sleeping with chorus girls
and leaving his poor Betty of a wife at home alone in her sad lavender
apartment. Fine. Boring but believable. Bel is quivering under the sharp eye of
the new Head of News, Mr Brown (and can I just say how happy I am to see Peter
Capaldi again, now that The Thick of It
is SOB finished forever), and trying to keep Hector happy, despite him being
utterly crap and apparently ruining her show. Lix is still 100% amazing. They should just
make the whole show about her.
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| Beautifully shot. |
