The Hour is greater than the sum of its parts, which isn't to say that it's great, exactly. It has a lot of problems: anachronistic language; feet-planted speechifying, also rather anachronistic, about marriage and the press and women in the workplace; a When Harry Met Sally-ish friendship between a man and a woman that you could buy as of its time, to a point, if it didn't feel done to death in any era. Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai mostly sell the friendship between Freddie and Bel — Whishaw's delivery is too actor-y in other subplots at times, but in scenes with Garai, he's toned down and real — but The Hour feels like a standard workplace drama that simply wanted to put its players in '50s clothes and eliminate the internet from the plotting.

Fair enough, and a good spy story is a more than valid excuse, but said plotting also has pacing problems, particularly towards the end. The lead-up to the climactic final episode of the show within the show never caught fire…and then all of a sudden Clarence is sobbing around a mouthful of exposition? And could the BBC free up a few pounds sterling for some goddamn lip balm already? This, Sherlock, the Inspector Lynley films — half the cast in a given Beeb drama is no more than a plosive away from splitting a bottom lip. Bonne Bell, Britannia. Figure it out.

But despite the incorrect phrasings, the chappedness, the talky hand-holding, I really liked it. It's nice to look at, it moves right along for the most part, Anna "Duckface" Chancellor is a hardboiled pleasure as Lix Storm, and it sucked me in. I hadn't realized before starting the series that it had gotten promoted as the British answer to Mad Men, but while I can see how that might lead to some disappointment, 1) Mad Men is not without its own flaws; and 2) high dudgeoneer Norman Lebrecht, balefully condemning The Hour as "aesthetically offensive to anyone who cares about accuracy," may have missed the point by juuuuust a degree or two. The Hour has an energy to it. It has a story, and a story within a story, that it wants to tell, and it tries to get that done by whatever means. Unfortunately, that can mean the occasional drama-club moment in which two characters tell each other things they already know, or an editing fail in the attempt to time the shows to each other — but then it just goes on to the next thing. There's something to be said in not getting bogged down with argot flashcards.

Evidently a second season is a go. I look forward to seeing where it goes next. No, it's not Mad Men. Most TV isn't. But The Hour is entertaining, which most TV also isn't, so if you don't think you'll have a seizure when "reference" is futuristically used as a verb (I…know), give it a spin.

The film follows the love affair of John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and for the first half, it is a consumptive gasp from turning into Lives of the Romantics: The Williamsburg Years — but it doesn't. Leads Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish do a good job of grounding the action and reminding us that every relationship, no matter how storied in history, started somewhere relatively quiet. A couple of leitmotifs let us feel like we really know these people (particularly Fanny's siblings, who act almost as familiars, attending on her), and the atmosphere that Campion creates of springtime hope is all the more impressive given that we know how this is going to end.

Once that endgame begins, the movie loses its way with a series of too-long, soggy scenes in which John and Fanny quote his poetry back and forth to each other, press their hands against the bedroom wall that divides them, and gaze tragically into each other's eyes. It's still gorgeous to look at, and it's not uninteresting to see how the final conflict plays out in the acting — if he's going to die anyway, should John just stay with Fanny, or go ahead to Italy to let his friends feel like they've helped him? — but the circumstances of Keats's demise are not exactly the best-kept secret in literature.

And then Fanny cuts her hair off and walks the heath, in the snow, reciting a Keats poem and weeping.Campion could have saved that bit by cutting to credits after the affecting wide shot of Fanny crossing a lea and her teenage brother dutifully trailing her, but she didn't, so the movie squanders its promising beginning with a conclusion straight out of a term paper.

Give it a spin anyway; it really is shot so beautifully. Its only nod is for Best Costume Design, but it should have gotten some recognition for Cinematography as well.

Death Race 35, Sarah 23; one of these days I will finish another category, but until then, still only 6 of 24 completed