‘You must never do a tango with an Eskimo’: if that Alma Cogan song isn’t buzzing around your head after having watched the first episode of the new series of The Hour, then you’re more resistant to catchy ‘50s pop than we are.

Metaphorical tangoing, both personal and political, is at the heart of this second series of the 1950s’ newsroom drama, and it’s not just ladies from Nebraska who have to fear the consequences of the bedroom shuffle. If Series 1 caught the buzz of journalistic endeavour in the heat of the Eden years, Series 2 takes time to strip things back and reveal the seedy compromises, professional and personal, made by the movers and the shakers of the not-yet swinging London.

Into this world of smoky gentleman’s clubs and honey-trap burlesque dancers, TV anchor Hector Madden (Dominic West) strides with the charisma and certainty of one who has inherited the keys to the kingdom. Wooed not only by the player-kings of the Soho underworld but also by the fledging ITV, his life choices are in danger of snapping shut around him, as he neglects both marriage and job, while cultivating the attention of more brutal players of the game than him.

In the face of so much temptation, Hector has lost his edge. But so too has ‘The Hour’, the current affairs programme which has made his name. Investigative reporter, Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw), has been dismissed, and firebrand producer, Bel Rowley (Romola Garai), has let things stagnate in both her personal life and, in the face of commercial channel opposition, in her professional life too.

But change is on the way for ‘The Hour’, both in the returning figure of Freddie Lyon – whose time abroad has brought with it its own surprises – and in the arrival of new Head of News, Mr Brown (Peter Capaldi): a man hardened by cynicism and sobriety, whose brusqueness in speaking the truth is the antidote to Hector’s complacent charm.

Writer Abi Morgan has revealed that the part of Randall Brown was written with Capaldi in mind – and hearing his delivery of Morgan’s precisely-crafted lines, it’s not hard to see why. Everything in The Hour, from the production design to the music, succeeds in evoking a world of stale, whisky-sodden patriarchy. But the biggest triumph is the dialogue. For these journalists, for whom words are a way of business, banter is both a means of attack and a brittle defence against vulnerability: a sardonic response to a world that is turning out wrong.

The permissive society may be round the corner, but it’s too far off for some, and, as public paranoia about the arms race meets domestic fears about immigration, it’s the women and the minorities who bear the brunt. Oona Chaplin does a fine job as Hector’s wife, quietly maddened by her perfect housewife life and her husband’s infidelities. Meanwhile, Hannah Tointon makes a striking debut as nightclub hostess, Kiki, who experiences at first fist the savagery of the Soho suits.

It’s a compelling cocktail of gangland thriller and love letter to the BBC. In fact, you can almost taste the Mai Tais, so convincingly is the period evoked. Last series, writer Morgan struggled to shake off the not wholly helpful ‘British Mad Men’ tag, but although The Hour is noirish, sophisticated and certainly for grown-ups, it’s also resolutely its own beast.

You should never do a tango with an Eskimo. But as the final, gently insidious, scenes of this opening episode play out, it’s hard to escape the feeling that, for some of these characters, their tangoing will become a very indulgent, very implosive journey of destruction. As stylish a danse macabre as it gets.

Series 2 begins on BBC Two in November.

> Buy the Series 1 DVD on Amazon.

Watch a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show…