The Glorious Hour

It has been accidental Romola Garai season in my living room this past week. It all began with watching the dreadful Stephen Poliakov film The Glorious 39 after a 7-hour bus journey (if I had been less exhausted, I hope I would have turned it off rather than watching the whole thing) and ended with catching up on the not dreadful at all Abi Morgan BBC series The Hour. As a result of all of this (and the fact that I can't have been the only one rooting around for a 1940s nurse's cape after watching Atonement) I can tell you for certain that Romola Garai always gets the best costumes, no matter how good or bad the writing.

If you haven't seen it, The Hour is a new BBC drama centred around a 1950s news programme (called 'The Hour') which aims to break the strict boundaries of news reporting and bring something new to the growing 1950s television audience. Despite all this boundary breaking, the most unusual thing about the programme itself is that its producer is a woman (Romola Garai as Bel Rowley) who refuses to be cowed by the widespread sexism spouted by various politicians and, occasionally, her boss.

The storyline of a woman in a man's world in the middle of the last decade brings inevitable comparisons with Mad Men – but that's really where the similarities end – BBC drama is nothing to the power of the American television networks, and, in this case, that's rather why I like it. The slick offices and shine of 1960s advertising are far away, and instead we get a rather more realistic picture of what life in 1950s city workplaces was probably like: less flouncy mid-length skirts and high-level grooming; more polystyrene ceilings, grey metal chairs, terrible coffee and unashamed sexism.

That aside, I do admire Bel Rowley's way with a headscarf, colourful cardigan and a pencil skirt (and, as the Guardian points out, sleeves), and reporter Freddie Lyon's grey flannel suits. I was going to put together a couple of Hour-inspired outfits for this post, but it seems that colourful waisted cardigans are in short supply as the high street is currently deep in 2011's take on the 1940s. Just another reason why The Hour is nothing like Mad Men.