The look of shock on Abi Morgan's face when her name was read out as the winner of the Emmy for writing in a mini-series looked more genuine than most. Although she had been nominated for the second year running for the 1950s newsroom drama The Hour, her hopes could not have been high. After all, the BBC had unceremoniously cancelled the show earlier this year.
The woman responsible for The Iron Lady and Sex Traffic was obviously too surprised to think of score-settling, limiting her acceptance speech to the usual thanks to all involved. With the self-deprecation that seems to play so well for Brits in the US, she said she would use the statuette to prove to doubting US customs officials that she really had been invited to the glitzy awards ceremony.
She might do better to use the gong to knock some sense into the BBC apparatchiks who made the decision to cancel a planned third and final series in the first place. How bittersweet it must have been for the BBC to finally triumph over Downton at a US awards ceremony with a show it couldn't be bothered seeing through to the end. Asked why the drama was axed with a central character left fighting for his life, the BBC emailed the same response it had in February: "We loved the show but have to make hard choices to bring new shows through."
At the time, they privately blamed viewing figures, which had dropped from 2.89m at launch to 1.68m for the second-series opener. Figures don't measure loyalty, of course. Within hours of the decision, a Change.org petition attracted more than 24,000 signatures and the obligatory Twitter hashtag #savethehour. Ben Whishaw, who played investigative reporter Freddie Lyons, called the decision a "shock and a disappointment", while Morgan herself was forced to declare that Freddie would have lived if the show had continued.
The Hour was always going to struggle to live up to pre-launch BBC publicity that dubbed it the British Mad Men and the second series was patchier than the first. But it was moving and engaging and, unusually for primetime, provided strong parts for men and women – Anna Chancellor as a hard-bitten foreign editor and Oona Chaplin as a cheated-on wife, as well as Romola Garai in the lead role.
Peter Capaldi, who won a Bafta nomination for his role in the show, recently suggested it could return as a one-off special. So let's hope his powers of time travel work where the angst of licence-fee payers has not.
