The Hours Crawl By

The essence of "water cooler television" used to be that a programme was so memorable that everyone at work would be talking about it the next day. These days it's a branding thing: watch this thing tonight or tomorrow you might have nothing to talk about.

Case in point: The Hour, the BBC's one-size-fits-all drama. It's part history, part social history, part breathless romance, part spy story, part detective story. The general idea seems to be to mix up all the genres so thoroughly that the audience won't even know which way is up, and it seems to be working, since Sordel is still resentfully watching it several weeks beyond its logical expiration date.

Until the most recent episode, none of the actors in The Hour seemed quite to have hit upon the perfect acting strategy for the drama. Romola Garai (only happy when a strand of hair is falling fetchingly over one eye) is one half blushing schoolgirl and one half strident feminist. Ben Whishaw (playing a journalist who would evidently be brilliant if the writers were able to supply evidence in the form of slick dialogue) is half pouting public school intellectual and half working class hero. A line of motley runs up the centre of each of them.

The most creditable work in the main cast is being done by Dominic West, who has relied thus far on a sweetly avuncular smile and arched eyebrow to suggest that he is keeping his best acting chops in reserve for some other programme, any other programme. Channelling Roger Moore is a skill that every great actor should have in his toolbag.

The latest episode, however, opened up the field to an actress who had the thing to a nicety. Jessica Hynes (previously known as Jessica Stevenson and best known for her roles in Spaced and The Royle Family) might be said to have played the entire thing for laughs, deploying a range of cod-period tics that have never hitherto been rolled into the same character.

There is such a thing as "mannered acting", but this crossed into some territory beyond High Camp, not even pausing to draw breath at the staging post of "a right Royal piss-take".

As water-cooler television goes, The Hour is deplorably tepid, but one senses that once it is done and dusted it will be the comic actors who add it to their c.v.s with the greatest pride, and the principals who claim to have been "resting" in 2011.