O.RE.SA-MIAN

I’m… very, very invested in this #savethehour campaign. Ridiculously so. The Hour is a show that touched me a lot. It’s not perfect, it has its flaws, but I feel completely drawn to it for reasons I can’t even explain (well, the directing indeed is flawless, and so is the acting, and the overall cinematography is stunningly beautiful, so those reasons are good enough I guess). I get emotional just looking at gif sets when I check the tag on Tumblr. It’s the show that has revealed Ben Whishaw’s talent to me (and fuck but that guy is the most brilliant actor I’ve ever seen). I didn’t want to go see Skyfall at first and when I learned that he was in it, I went running to the nearest cinema.

His character Freddie Lyon is incredible. I can’t explain why exactly either. He just feel very real, very human, tangible, like someone you might know. He’s complex: idealistic, brilliant, but also a morally ambiguous, manipulative asshole, sharp as a knife but also full of subtleties (reminding me somehow of a young Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in Purple Noon by René Clément, one of my favourite films ever). I bawled my eyes out at the end of series 2, all because of the perfect symbiosis between Ben Whishaw and Freddie Lyon. Any other actor and it probably wouldn’t have been such a punch to the gut. And I want more of it. More punches to the gut, please.

And then there’s Romola Garai and her character Bel Rowley, both of whom I desperately crush on. She is —they both are — in Freddie’s words, exquisite. Such charisma is rarely seen on television (don’t even get me started on all the other fantastic actors on this show, from Dominic West to Anna Chancellor and Peter Capaldi and Oona Chaplin, oh my god do they grow them on trees in the UK or what, how is it possible to have such a high concentration of quality acting on such a small screen??), and I want more of that, all of that, too.

I recommended The Hour to most people I know, even wrote a glittering review about it in the French magazine I work for. When I learned through Tumblr that the BBC might not commission a third series, I immediately wrote to them through their website to tell them how good it was, how much I loved it and that I really hoped there would be more episodes soon. And then the official anouncement came out, the very same day, that the show was axed.

Immediately, I signed the petition that’s been going around, and even created myself a Twitter account just to participate to the #savethehour trending effort. I’ve been regularly checking that the petition was gaining more and more signatures too (seriously, I keep refreshing the page, it’s ridiculous, technically I have other things to do with my life).

I don’t usually do this, and I wouldn’t do this for any other show. But The Hour is quality. As a comics author, I’ve had a comics series stopped after only the second volume came out because the books didn’t sell enough. It was one of the most horrible, heartbreaking moments of my (still young) life. There was nothing I could do about it, and I loved my story and my characters but nothing could save them at the time and I had to let them go. I don’t know if it’s why I’m so emotionally involved in what’s happening to The Hour, but I feel that at least for this one fight, there is hope. That the fans can actually do something about it and make a difference. Let them feel the power of our love!

tl;dr : If you also love The Hour and want a third series, you can sign the petition and spread it around: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-bbc-please-commission-a-third-series-of-the-hour-savethehour

You can also write to the BBC, or join the page on Facebook, and if you have a Twitter account, get #savethehour trending!

If you don’t know the show, I urge you to watch it and then give it your support because there is a good chance that you will fall in love with it like I did.