Favorite Characters: Bel Rowley (The Hour)

Okay, so I don’t find this passionate, determined TV producer fighting the boys’ club of the mid-century BBC quite as cool since I saw the incredible Verity Lambert in An Adventure in Space and Time.  Not only is Verity a) BAMF, b) a real person, and c) the first producer of Doctor frickin’ Who, accounts also suggest she was even more awesome in real life.  So really, who can compete with that?

But that’s all right, because Bel is still pretty great.  She’s a woman with huge ambitions that she doesn’t apologize for.  In the ‘50s, an age when female producers just weren’t a thing, Bel goes after the captain-of-the-ship position on The Hour, a news program with an arresting new format and its sights set on the stories other programs aren’t telling.  Plenty of men in her industry think she can’t do it, and it’s even suggested that she may have gotten the job due to a perception that she’d be easier than a male counterpart to steer behind the curtain.  Is she perfect, as a person, a woman, or a producer?  Of course not, but her creative vision and fierce dedication pay off in big ways.  When colleagues and work contacts give her the old “run along, darling; men are working” attitude, it hurts, obviously – near-daily backhanded slaps in the face – but she grits her teeth and keeps at it.  She recognizes that, ultimately, no matter how cutting and pithy her retorts to their casual, deep-ingrained sexism are, the only real way to beat them is to prove them wrong.

Now, she naturally wants big things for herself and her career, but she also wants nothing but the best for her program.  Bel has a keen eye for television:  what does and doesn’t work on-camera, how to build an interview to a crescendo, and how to get around the red tape set up to limit journalists.  What’s more, she has an honest, hard-won fervor for news.  What happens, at home and around the world, matters to her, and nothing is more precious to her than presenting the news in provocative ways that make people look at a subject from a hitherto-unseen angle.  Though not quite as reckless as Freddie, she puts herself out on any number of limbs in pursuit of an important story.  In the battle for Bel’s attentions, her work comes first pretty much every time.

On the personal-life side of things, it’s hardly the first time we’ve seen a story about a woman whose flings and love interests can’t handle her dedication to her work.  However, this is one of the most well-done versions of this trope that I’ve seen.  I love that the show gets that it’s not just about her obligations, or using work to deflect addressing daunting personal stuff, or even her desire to prove herself to people who don’t believe in her.  These things are all factors, but at the heart of it is her passion for news.  When Bel says she loves her work, I buy it wholeheartedly – she talks about the news the way other characters talk about their love-interests.  Gorgeous.

And as smart, committed, and curious as she is, I like that she can also be kind of a disaster.  She has an unfortunate tendency to fall for unavailable men, and when she focuses too hard on the misogynistic naysayers, her anxiousness to refute them can sometimes get in her way, tripping her up and muddying her efforts.  I like that she’s not always strong.  I like that, even though she knows sexism is ugly and stupid, it wears at her and she can have self-doubts.  Maybe it goes back to that (amazing) Dead Like Me quote about “respecting someone for being a mess, because you’re a mess, too.”  Bel is flawed, but she feels flawed in a rich, complex way, which makes me all the happier to root for her to get it right.