Romola Garai, Dominic West and Ben Whishaw star in The Hour, Abi Morgan’s new drama which takes viewers behind the scenes of a 1956 broadcast news room, coming to BBC Two later this month.
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Freddie Lyon
Played by Ben Whishaw
Born and brought up in Notting Hill, home affairs correspondent Freddie Lyon is a grammar school boy who excelled. His mother, May, died two years ago, leaving him alone to cope with his father, Malcolm, who is struggling with dementia. Freddie is brilliant, more than he knows. Outspoken and often brighter than those he works with, his contemporary, Bel, is one of the few people who totally get him. A meeting of opposites, Bel sees in Freddie a similar determination to rebel against his upbringing and to forge a new life in a society free of the shackles of class and wealth.
An agitator and provocateur, Freddie has worked with Bel for the last four years and fallen in love with her, a fact he keeps close to his heart. Freddie has never had a committed relationship; this is in part due to his experience during the war as a teenage evacuee with the Elms family, and the impact living with the aristocracy had on him. Freddie affects a witty disregard for the upper classes and the world they represent, but when The Elms’ daughter, Ruth, comes to him for help he is once more reminded of the guilt he felt on leaving her all those years ago.
Bel Rowley
Played by Romola Garai
Educated at a leading Ladies College, Bel Rowley is the daughter of Verda and Clive Rowley, a banker who she rarely sees. Verda, a former showgirl who married well financially, has spurned married life, stirring scandal by divorcing Clive after a very public affair. Throughout her life, Bel has been a good girl. The endless affairs with married men were her quiet act of rebellion, but over time she has come to the realisation that she is simply mirroring her mother.
Freddie is her best friend and soul mate and she has grown so used to having him around that it is only within her new role as producer of The Hour that the friendship begins to shift and fundamentally change. Hector’s charm and relaxed demeanour both attract and frustrate Bel. Whilst others at first discount him, she sees a hidden passion in Hector and a potential for brilliance. However Bel’s new found bond with Hector does not sit easily alongside her deeply embedded friendship with Freddie, will it eventually force Bel to re-evaluate her priorities?
Hector Madden
Played by Dominic West
Born into a distinguished if distant family, Hector Madden is one of three sons brought up by his widowed father. Sent away to boarding school, Hector has a deeply rooted sense of entitlement. Hector’s own upbringing and education has formed him into a charming and charismatic man and this makes him perfect for the role of presenter on The Hour.
Hector’s marriage to Marnie was welcomed by her father, a lower middle class industrialist and member of the new post war rich. Hector is desperate to prove himself and feels blighted by a marriage under strain. Bel provides the intellectual challenge and spark he has been searching for. Hector’s deepest secret is that at the heart he longs to escape the establishment and yet is frightened of placing himself outside of it.
Clarence Fendley
Played by Anton Lesser
Head of News, Clarence Fendley has worked for the BBC since the early Thirties, having covered the Second World War in London. From a military family, Clarence is a thoughtful man. The Hour, born in part from his own desire to see the presentation of news change within the BBC, is also a vehicle for Clarence to bring together some of the best minds in the BBC. Clarence sees in Freddie a future Editor in Chief and his natural heir, though he keeps this information largely concealed from Freddie and those around him.
Sissy Cooper
Played by Lisa Greenwood
Sissy Cooper is a giggler, a breath of fresh air and the least educated member of the team. And yet what Sissy lacks in education she makes up for with life skills, a perceptive and resourceful secretary. Inspired by Bel, Sissy yearns for more but comes to see that her role as production secretary is key. A life force and a brilliant spirit, Sissy brings heart and humour to the office and can be relied upon by all of the team when it gets tough.
Angus McCain
Played by Julian Rhind-Tutt
Angus McCain is one of Anthony Eden’s press advisors and as a liaison between the government and the BBC he seeks to maintain a firm influence over any politically sensitive programming. His loyalty to Prime Minister Eden is born out of a deep belief in Britain and everything it stands for. Single, McCain is discreet about his sexuality and though he has girlfriends it has been in question in the past.
Lix Storm
Played by Anna Chancellor
An eminent war correspondent, Lix Storm is very comfortable in the world of men. Her quick wit and dry sensibility covers a series of deep scars, aware that her past is there to haunt her when she sobers up. Living on a constant cocktail of whisky and Gauloises, Lix anaesthetizes herself from the pains of the world and is a good and competent drunk. With the seizure of the Suez Canal, Lix sees a story that will challenge the country and its sense of empire and leaps at it, fearless and ready to put herself on the line.
Isaac Wengrow
Played by Joshua McGuire
Freddie’s assistant, Isaac Wengrow, is the youngest child and only boy in a family of five sisters all brought up in East London. The grandson of an orthodox Jew from Eastern Europe, Isaac is the first in his family to be born in Britain and his parents are fiercely proud of him, a young man with a great comic ear and with a yearning to write sketches for television. Finding a mentor in Freddie, Isaac is hugely impressed by his boss and wishes to emulate him. Isaac is also harbouring a crush on Sissy that will challenge him through the course of the series.
Marnie Madden
Played by Oona Chaplin
Marnie Madden and her brother Ralph have never wished for anything in life. The indulged children of millionaire industrialist Wallace Sherwin, Marnie’s life is on course when Hector gets the job on The Hour. She knows Hector does not love her as she loves him, but hopes with time and the influence of her father, that Hector will come to see what she can offer him. Over the course of the series, Marnie finds new steel when her marriage and future with Hector comes under threat and she faces Bel, a woman who is the opposite of everything that she aspired to be.
Lord Elms
Played by Tim Pigott-Smith
Lord Elms is an eminent lawyer and was a decorated soldier during the First World War. May Lyon, Freddie’s mother, was one of his first secretaries and he stayed in close contact with her during the Second World War. A quiet benefactor to Freddie, Lord Elms took Freddie in and found in Freddie the son he never had. However an allegiance to the old world establishment has forced Lord Elms to make difficult choices in his life and he constantly kept those closest to him, including his daughter, at a distance.
Lady Elms
Played by Juliet Stevenson
A cold and distant woman, Lady Elms is racked with denial, a woman who is fighting back the seeping guilt and grief she feels. She is unable to break the shackles of her privileged upbringing, having lived in India until marriage to her husband. Part of a dying generation and the old empire, Lady Elms disapproved of Freddie’s presence when he was evacuated to live with them during the Blitz and was the harsh voice that would not allow Lord Elms to permit Freddie staying after the war. Lord Elms has never truly forgiven her for the daily snobberies and the entrapped world that she forces them to live in.
Wallace Sherwin
Played by Ken Bones
A rich industrialist, Wallace Sherwin made a fortune during the war supplying arms to the British forces for which he was duly rewarded after the war. Invited into the inner circle, Wallace lacks the class or education he now bestows on his children but sees in Hector an investment on which he expects a good return. Wallace has connections both in the world of politics and the BBC and is a quiet manipulator of proceedings.
Douglas Owen
Played by John Bowe
A long-serving newsman and now Director of Programmes, Douglas Owen started his life in the Foreign Service. Moving into television news, Douglas has worked his way up as a product of the establishment. When faced with Eden and McCain’s growing demands for control of the corporation, Douglas finds himself on another frontline where the battle lines between corporation and Westminster are as keenly drawn as they were in war.
Ruth Elms
Played by Vanessa Kirby
Twenty one and beautiful, Ruth Elms spent the year after finishing school studying at university where she met and was seduced by Peter Darrall, a brilliant academic and political mind. Young and idealistic, Ruth, despite her education and the relative affluence of her life, was deeply neglected as a child by her mother, and sought comfort in her busy father, a man who she could talk to but who gave her little time. Freddie was the lifeline in her early years and she grieved his absence. Now as her relationship with Peter destabilises her life it’s Freddie who she turns to once more.
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