TV reviews: The Hour | Richard Hammond's Journey to the Centre of the Planet

The HourTuesday, BBC2, 9pmRichard Hammond's Journey to the Centre of the PlanetTuesday, BBC1, 9pm

AFTER the last couple of weeks, you could be forgiven for being completely sated of discussions about media ethics and what the news we're given says about us as a country. Well, tough, for you'd be a mug to miss The Hour, the BBC's much-touted new drama series which is all about such things and aims to show that stylish, wordy, snappy shows needn't just be the preserve of America's upmarket cable channels.

The obvious inspiration for Abi Morgan's script is Mad Men, as viewers may experience a similar nostalgic swoon at the period setting. Here it's 1956 London, where men wore suits and hats, while women had to battle both sexism and uncomfortable girdles to get ahead. But I'd be surprised if she hadn't watched the underrated 1987 film Broadcast News as well, which presciently showed the dumbing down of news values.

Hide Ad

There, Holly Hunter's smart producer found herself drawn to her handsome but superficial presenter, William Hurt, to the chagrin of nerdy, ethical reporter Albert Brooks; here, Romola Garai's equally capable producer (looking gorgeous in natty 1950s outfits) seems impressed by Dominic West's charming star presenter while frustrated, fiery reporter Ben Whishaw tries to uncover a story.

Yet The Hour is really coming from a different, more optimistic place, one which celebrates the virtues of journalism – which may make it a hard sell at the moment but could prove more interesting as drama. The characters aren't trying to dumb down the news, they're trying to brain it up; to create a new type of current affairs show which actually looks at what's going on in the country, rather than the staid, banal newsreel-type broadcasts read by men in dinner jackets, giving a top-down view of the world of socialites, royalty and unquestioned official pronouncements. Instead, the colleagues want to bring viewers the truth and drag the country into a more modern age.

There is, clearly, a certain irony here and it's interesting to ponder the changes since then. But even placing the big themes of the series to one side, there's a lot going on: Whishaw's Freddie getting sucked into a murder investigation, Bel (Garai) trying to fit into the male-dominated newsroom, the sexual tension between her and West's possibly phony, possibly genuine Hector and the unrequited love between her and Freddie. Not to mention the hats and frocks. In fact, there's almost too much going on, but after this first cluttered episode, it could develop into a fine, engrossing series.

In Richard Hammond's Journey To The Centre Of The Planet, the sniggering sidekick and Mexican-mocker from Top Gear unforgivably keeps referring to the world as "the Earth machine," a phrase which sounds like something from a forgotten 1950s pulp sci-fi: Flash Hammond Versus Dr Chaotica's Deadly Earth Machine! He then regales us with a curious story about seeing a donkey from his childhood bedroom window, which looked like it had fallen into a sinkhole but turned out not to have done: for the sake of this less-than-fascinating anecdote, a camera crew is sent out to the very spot where the donkey didn't sink so we can all imagine the junior Hammond's experience.

Now, things do hot up once the BBC graphics department start showing off with nifty images of Trafalgar Square being lifted up to reveal the layers underground and visualisations of magma spiralling up from under the earth. But the programme's start does sum it up, presenting the kind of big scientific ideas which would once have been the preserve of beardie academics on Open University programming, but are now allowed on TV only if there is a celebrity chummily mincing their way through a "journey" because they've "always wanted to know" what lies beneath the earth, or under the sea, or inside a U-bend.

And so you get sentences like "the bit we actually live on is called the Earth's crust," for those who have never attended school.

Hide Ad

That's "the Earth's" crust, in case anyone might be picturing some sort of toast edging. Later he tells us that California is prone to earthquakes and explains where volcanos come from. Sadly, at no point does he actually descend into the bowels of the earth, so the sci-fi sounding title doesn't quite deliver.

If this were showing on CBBC, it would be a marvellous introduction to geology for youngsters, but for adults it's all a bit patronising. And it's only part of an ongoing problem with science programming, from the Top Gear blokes' spin-offs to Prof Brian "Brilliant!" Cox whizzing around the world enthusiastically. Clearly I'm no boffin (or I'd be doing something more useful than this with my life) but if someone whose greatest scientific achievement was getting 26 per cent in a physics O-Grade prelim can follow it all, then it must be massively frustrating for anyone who actually understands anything to never – or rarely – get to watch programmes which might tell them something new rather than going back over the basics again and again ("this is what we call lava," says Hammond, solemnly).

Hide Ad

Clearly it's important to have good, general introductions to scientific concepts, especially when so many of us still read horoscopes and are not quite sure about climate change, but there should be a few at a higher level as well. After all, there are specialised factual programmes for almost everything else, from antiques dealing to cooking, which assume some level of knowledge, so why does science have to always be spelled out with little words and big, exciting pictures? Can't we just have the occasional beardie academic with a blackboard talking about stuff which goes over our heads?

• This article first appeared in The Scotsman on Saturday 16 July 2011

Related topics: