I remember the so-called Suez Crisis as Dwight Eisenhower’s finest hour. I am sure that England, France, and especially Israel didn’t see it that way, but that’s how I saw it, as world affairs began to intrude on my young consciousness. The parallels to the Libya situation are obvious. Qadaffi is not Nasser, but in 1956 the flow of oil through the Suez Canal was to many Europeans a casus belli and today, for all the talk about human rights, Libyan oil is more than a trivial consideration. In the Suez affair, England and France expected the U.S. to join their anti-Egyptian outrage, but Ike was not buying.
What brings this to mind is the BBC’s six-part drama called "The Hour," now running on BBC-America. If you can tolerate the channel’s commercial breaks (hard to do), this is a good miniseries, revolving around Freddy Lyons, a young BBC firebrand who wants the Beeb to spend less time on celebrity gossip and more on the storm brewing in Egypt. The drama’s title is also the name of a new current affairs program, with an anchorman who has looks and connections but not much substance (sort of like the William Hurt character in Broadcast News).
Freddy Lyons is played convincingly by Ben Whishaw, and the equally credible anchor is Dominic West. The obligatory romantic triangle is rounded out by Romola Garai, as the producer of The Hour
I have seen only three of the six episodes, so my comments are subject to revision, but here they are: There is real irony here: In the play, Freddy Lyons is understandably frustrated by the BBC’s preference for the trivial over the consequential. Check. Then why on earth does The Hour spend so much time on the weakest story line, the aforementioned triangle, and so little on the main thread? Probably because the writers were afraid that the audience would not grasp the gravity of the Suez crisis. So they turned instead to the old “will she or won’t she?” formula.
Still, there’s more than enough grist to keep one interested, and the acting is topnotch, as it usually is in BBC productions. You can pick it up Wednesday nights at 10 on BBC-America, but at this point you will be hopelessly confused if you try to catch up, and you would be better off waiting for the DVD.
Besides, the DVD will spare you all those terrible commercials.
