'The Hour' Puts a Woman Ahead of the Mad Men

Aug. 17, 2011 — -- Mad men, meet the woman of the hour.

"The Hour," a six-part drama premiering on BBC America tonight, chronicles the goings-on of a newsroom in 1950s Britain -- post WWII, pre-Cold War and on the brink of the Suez crisis. Men dominate this world, but one woman shines: Bel, played by British actress Romola Garai.

As the producer of the BBC's intrepid new news program, Bel bears the weight of "The Hour." Clad in wool sheaths and a wavy bob, navigating the newsroom through a haze of cigarette smoke and a heavy dose of whiskey, it's impossible not to compare Bel to her counterparts on a similar series -- "Mad Men."

But unlike Peggy, Joan and the rest of the women inhabiting "Mad Men's" ad agencies, Bel lords over the big boys. She bosses around Hector, (Dominic West) "The Hour's" handsome anchor, and reprimands Freddie (Ben Whishaw), "The Hour's" wannabe handsome anchor turned scrappy correspondent. She chastises a female receptionist for flirting instead of plotting her career.

And sexism? She hits back with sarcasm. When Hector, not knowing that Bel's his future boss, sees her flipping through magazines and says that women only like glossies because of their pictures, she coos, "You're so right, and those things called novels, so many words!"

"She takes it in stride," Garai told ABCNews.com. "It would have been a very contemporary reaction for me to have played her being appalled by the misogyny of her workplace, because that kind of thing would have been completely normal at the time."

In a TV landscape rife with female characters who sex or scream to get what they want (sometimes, in the case of certain reality shows, they do both), Bel's a breath of fresh air. For Garai, taking her on came with responsibility.

"Even in the context of a show like 'The Hour,' I torture myself thinking about what is a good representation of women and then what is a truthful representation," she said. "When a character does something that disappoints because you because it is not a positive representation of your gender, sometimes you have to allow that to happen."

Case in point: When Bel cements the Bel-Hector-Freddie love triangle with a clandestine encounter at a party (no spoilers here, watch the third episode to find out who kisses whom).

"Her personal life is definitely a reflection of somebody who doesn't feel like they're owed a love of their own," Garai said. "But on the other hand, you could say that this someone who is living without a sexual guilt, which is an interesting expression of freedom."

If Bel is a renegade of a bygone era, Garai might be one of today's. Film buffs may remember her as the elder Briony in 2007's "Atonement;" "The Hour" is Garai's biggest role to date.

Her thoughtful approach to acting belies her 29 years. She mused about modern day discrimination: "You know, I am part of an industry where people tend not to complain if they're harassed in the workplace. People get told to lose weight for a role all the time and nobody ever sues anyone. But if I were asked to, I would never do that."

Even the glamour of the '50s fails to slay her. While "Mad Men" prompted a revival of tweeds and sheaths and crimson lips, Garai wonders "whether women of that era would want the fashions of to be celebrated or whether they looked forward to a time in the future when women didn't wear a corset to work and maybe didn't have to wear an inch of makeup to be beautiful."

And she worries, in portraying a time that wasn't so welcoming to her gender, about "glorifying an era when misogyny was completely open. You think it would be a wonderful new opportunity for young people to see the battle that women went through in the workplace, but I don't know that's the way people always experience it."

"The Hour" is about much more than women in the workplace. A mysterious murder turns it into a Noir kind of thriller. The beginnings of broadcast news are at its heart. The humor is very, very British. But in the face of inevitable comparisons to other '50s and '60s era fare, it's worth highlighting how a female protagonist like Bel sets "The Hour" apart from the rest.

"There are things about that era I feel quite mixed about while everyone else is kind of in a glow of nostalgia," she said. "The thing that really interests me about Bel is how she becomes more and more willing to be dominant in the workplace. How she realizes that she has a right to be there, that she doesn't have to play games to achieve what she wants."