Parents' Guide to

The Hour

By Kari Croop, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Artful drama explores the origins of news as we know it.

TV BBC America Drama 2011
The Hour Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

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age 18+

Based on 1 parent review

camronf
camronf Adult
June 25, 2015
age 18+

Not What I View as TV-14

We're a Christian household, and are always trying to find things that fit within our moral standards. This show does have a lot of cursing (which I mute, aided by a script I find online) and ended up liking the storyline and that there wasn't excessive gore or sex scenes... until either episode three or four, when an extremely inappropriate love scene toward the end started on the screen. Nothing I would let any fourteen-year-old, or even myself, at nineteen, to watch. I am much stricter, I suppose, on what I would consider too intimate for the general public to be exposed to no matter their age, but I find a lot of parents would agree that this is too mature for fourteen-year-olds or anyone under the age of seventeen. So sad because I was enjoying watching the show with all of the mystery and intrigue.

This title has:

Too much sex
Too much swearing
See all 1 parent review

What's the Story?

With the Suez Crisis brewing in the background, a small team of British journalists prepares to launch an hourlong investigative news show on BBC television called THE HOUR. Producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) pulls in Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw), the best reporter she knows, to serve as the show's home affairs correspondent, while the handsome and charismatic Hector Madden (Dominic West) gets the coveted position of presenter.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (1):
Kids say (1):

With its spot-on period details and glamorous styling that artfully captures the feel of mid-1950s London, The Hour has drawn obvious comparisons to the Emmy Award-winning American drama Mad Men, which was set just a few years later in 1960s Manhattan. But smart looks aside, the two shows prove to be very different series, exploring different aspects of media and culture.

While The Hour received mixed reviews from critics across the pond, where it's already aired, it does many things exceptionally well, delivering complex characters, a well-paced story, and, of course, the aforementioned art direction. In fact, the show's biggest drawback is that, true to British form, it contains a mere six episodes -- and you'll probably want more than that.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about sexism and women in the workplace. Does it surprise you to see that there were physical places women weren't allowed to be in the 1950s (let alone theoretical ones)?

  • Why were women often considered inferior to men, particularly in a professional environment, and how does the show address these prejudices? How have attitudes about the feminine "nature" changed since then?

  • How does the one-hour news show the characters create compare to the mix of news and opinion programs on the air today? How has the 24-hour news cycle -- and the Internet -- changed the way we get information?

  • Do people smoke and drink more or less than they used to in the 1950s? What social, environmental, and political factors brought about the change?

TV Details

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