The Hour

 

I don't really watch TV shows. I like films, I like stories, I like books, I don't have the patience for TV shows. There are exceptions (I'm looking at you, Sherlock!), but I prefer the excitement of a really good novel. So I don't know why I decided that I should watch The Hour. It must have been the combination of strong female characters (!), journalism and politics. Well, I loved all of that, loved the fact that they casually mentioned the Wolfenden Report - but here's what I liked best: that the relationships, and especially the friendships, seemed real. When was the last time you saw a realistic boy-girl friendship on screen? When was the last time you read about one? It doesn't happen all that often, perhaps because of that myth that men and women can't be friends. I love a really good portrayal of friendship: all the silliness, the nicknames, the history, the bickering, the weird jokes. I find it fascinating that close friendships are often still a great mystery to us, something that we expect to turn into something else, a pre-stage to a romantic relationship. The Hour doesn't depart from this premise entirely, but it's still more vivid - and wonderfully free of women as manic pixie dream girls - than any of the numerous indie films I've watched in the past year.