Time Stops For 'The Hour'
What the hell is wrong with Britain? It's not like I expect American audiences to deliver boffo ratings for a TV drama set in England in the middle of the last century; American audiences barely watch Mad Men, and those people don't have any sort of crazy accents for viewers to contend with. But England, I expected more from you. Ratings for the show's second season actually dropped? It was all about sexy showgirls and prostitutes! You idiots left the BBC with no choice (apparently) but to cancel it -- though I'm not totally sure how those decisions are made in a non-commercial television context; why should ratings matter? Anyway, shame on you all, United Kingdom.
If you haven't watched the show's second season -- in which case, shame on you as well -- go watch it and then come back and pick up reading this post starting with the sentence after this one. Given the way the season ended, with Freddie (Ben Whishaw) badly beaten and dumped on the lawn in front of Lime Grove, I had feared that Season 3 would pick up after his death (so that Whishaw could go make another Bond movie or whatever the hell). But now that I've acquired these notes from the Hour writers' room (read: Abi Morgan's office), I see how wrong I was! Here are some of the period-accurate ideas Morgan was toying with to wrap up the series.
- South Africa leaves the Commonwealth; Freddie gets a tip on pro-Apartheid executives at the BBC
- Bel sends Hector to report on Communist Cuba; he gets caught there during the Bay of Pigs crisis
- Freddie gets headhunted to consult on That Was The Week That Was
- Bel dates a Beatle
- Freddie has another professional crisis of faith, joins a pirate radio crew broadcasting from a boat in the North Sea
- office explodes when Sissy takes an unexpectedly hard line against Barbadian independence
- Lix dates a Rolling Stone
- Elated by England's World Cup win, Freddie finally proposes to Bel
- Season finale: Bel and Freddie marry on the 100th anniversary of Canadian confederation