The Hour (UK)
BBC-2 | BBC America | BBC Two | Release Date: July 19, 2011
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandNov 26, 2012
Season 2 Review: The performances, the writing, the intelligence that goes into the script and the characters--all reasons for welcoming the start of a new season of The Hour. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: The Hour stands perfectly well on its own merits. It's so good that other shows should start looking to it as something to emulate. Read full review
100
Uncle BarkyEd BarkAug 15, 2011
Season 1 Review: Viewers craving a satisfying gourmet meal rather than another summertime "reality" Moon Pie are urged to make The Hour a Wednesday night ritual for the next six weeks. Read full review
91
HitfixAlan SepinwallNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: It's a treat to be back in this world again, and perhaps by the end of this season I'll feel happier about the crime arc than I did about the spy stuff. Read full review
90
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: The Hour teems with flawed but driven professionals who, even at their worst, never come off as ridiculous as Newsroom's fools' gallery. The hours just fly by Read full review
90
Boston GlobeMatthew GilbertNov 27, 2012
Season 2 Review: The Hour is not "Breaking Bad" good, or "Mad Men" good, but it's close. Read full review
90
TimeJames PoniewozikAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: The BBC's The Hour, the best new show this summer. Read full review
90
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: This is sleek, sexy, smart, densely written and deliberately paced adult entertainment. Read full review
88
RedEyeCurt WagnerAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: The smartly written series throws a lot of information, historical context, beautiful sets and costumes at viewers early on to create what eventually becomes a first-rate thriller. Read full review
83
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: For those impatient for the return of "Mad Men," The Hour fills that void and then some. Read full review
83
HitfixAlan SepinwallAug 16, 2011
Season 1 Review: A winning new drama set only a few years before Don Draper would get a new secretary named Peggy Olsen. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Matt Zoller SeitzNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: The Hour has never pretended to be anything other than a very classy potboiler filled with attractive people, one that puts its heroes into predicaments that wouldn't be out of place in a silent film while sneaking social and historical commentary into the margins. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: As with "Mad Men," we all recognize the workplace dynamic here. And as in "Mad Men," it's satisfying to see it dramatized in such a fresh and knowing way. Read full review
80
PopMattersAlyssa PelishNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: [Marnie's] one element in the rich vein of personalities that The Hour only began to mine in its first season, and one of the many reasons the second season is looking very good indeed. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamaraNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: Bel and her staff are no longer young Turks shaking up the fusty old BBC; now they are, for better or worse, part of the mainstream news media, forced to question their own motivations as well as those of the Establishment. In the first two episodes anyway, this makes for a more sophisticated storytelling, a drama of adults who must take responsibility for decisions of the mind as well as the heart. Read full review
80
SalonWilla PaskinNov 27, 2012
Season 2 Review: The Hour's charms are many, but chief among them is its celebration of intelligence and diligence as cardinal, animating virtues. Read full review
80
The Huffington PostMaureen RyanNov 26, 2012
Season 2 Review: The Hour has some pacing issues--there are sludgy patches that could use a bit more zip and energy--but overall, the show creates a delectable, specific world that's very easy to glide into and inhabit. Read full review
80
The Huffington PostMaureen RyanAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: Sure, it's not particularly deep and has some pacing issues, but it's a generally watchable, well-acted effort. Read full review
80
Boston GlobeMatthew GilbertAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: It offers amusement and a tad of suspense, but little to ponder over the long run. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert LloydAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: What makes it so engaging is not that the series finds anything new to twist, but that it works so well with and within the strictures of the well-thumbed genres it combines in equal parts: spy thriller, murder mystery, backstage drama, triangular romance. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: No, The Hour is unlikely to remind anyone of "Mad Men." Except that it's superior period drama with a deliberate pace. Read full review
80
The New York TimesAlessandra StanleyAug 16, 2011
Season 1 Review: The plot twists of The Hour can at times be puzzling, but the series is never dull. Read full review
80
VarietyBrian LowryAug 15, 2011
Season 1 Review: This is the kind of meticulously handsome period piece one would expect to find via the BBC--mostly because it would surely struggle Stateside. Judged by the most bottom-line measurement of all, The Hour is an hour well spent. Read full review
75
New York PostMichael StarrDec 5, 2012
Season 2 Review: I have a sneaking suspicion that, over its next four installments, The Hour will ratchet-up the drama and intrigue and retain the excellence it's achieved thus far. Read full review
75
People WeeklyTom GliattoNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: I'll take Hour's rather sour worldview--deadlines in deadly times--over the grand uplift of HBO's The Newsroom. In a nanosecond. [3 Dec 2012, p.44]
75
NewsdayVerne GayNov 27, 2012
Season 2 Review: There are real pleasures with "The Hour," but the hour (actually, about an hour and 15 minutes Wednesday night) ticks by far too slowly. Read full review
70
The New York TimesMike HaleNov 27, 2012
Season 2 Review: At least in the early going, the current season avoids the sentimental speechifying about truth and justice that became increasingly prevalent in Season 1. And the let's-put-on-a-broadcast scenes are still reliably entertaining. Read full review
70
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniNov 27, 2012
Season 2 Review: It's too early to tell whether the new season will have the intelligent plotting, tense pacing, and superb cohesion Morgan and her actors brought to the first. But it's off to a good start. Read full review
70
VarietyBrian LowryNov 27, 2012
Season 2 Review: This second Hour remains an interesting historical document, but at least initially appears more determined to replicate qualities that distinguished the first rather than advance them. Read full review
70
Washington PostHank StueverAug 16, 2011
Season 1 Review: An engaging yet taciturn new miniseries. Read full review
70
SlateTroy PattersonAug 16, 2011
Season 1 Review: Perhaps it's best to consider The Hour as a kind of retro Broadcast News that is most alive when Freddie and Bel banter like Beatrice and Benedick and especially when getting inside of Hector's talking head. Read full review
70
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenAug 16, 2011
Season 1 Review: The Hour looks fantastic but it moves at a snail's pace that's sure to irk impatient viewers. Read full review
50
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardNov 28, 2012
Season 2 Review: The players seem to spend much of their time entering and exiting the same drab offices while shoveling exposition at one other. Read full review
50
PopMattersRenee Scolaro MoraAug 17, 2011
Season 1 Review: Freddie's stereotypically hard-hitting reporter's persona is soon tiring and irksome. Still, Freddie isn't so tedious as the show's "villains." Read full review
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