“My name is Nick. I am a journalist, and this is a story that ends in seven major police investigations, nearly 40 convictions, and some of the most powerful people in this country being brought to their knees.”
This sounds like a suitably dramatic start to a show, but quickly this voiceover is being second-guessed by Nick Davies, played here by David Tennant. “No, no, it’s too grand, too grand, too grand”, the journo (revealed to be sitting at his computer) mutters, consigning his own words to whatever shadow realm the delete button banishes unwanted writing to.
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It’s a familiar feeling to anyone who conjures up words for a living—and it’s not even Davies’ first attempt to start The Hack, having already condemned his initial opening as “florid nonsense”. Right out of the gate, this new UK drama is making a very clear statement. This is not going to be some straightforward, dry retelling of a story that you may or may not recall from last decade’s news cycle—the rippling effects across Britain of what initially seemed to be a limited hacking of celebrity voicemails by a lone rogue journalist.
The story behind the story that Davies tells us in The Hack will challenge an audience to keep up. There’s technical info, political manoeuvring (within the police force, among the media, and literally in the world of politics) and a quickly growing cast of characters to stay on top of.
So, deploying techniques straight out of The Big Short via premium British television makes a lot of sense as well as demonstrating creative confidence by the show. There’s no Margot Robbie explaining things from a bubble bath, but there’s a lot of Tennant breaking the fourth wall to address us directly, many many cameos, and even a CGI dung beetle rolling its prize possession along a London street (don’t worry, it’ll make sense in context).
The first episode whips along, with Nick Davies following up on an anonymous tip about phone hacking by tabloid News of the World. Quickly learning this is the tip of the iceberg, Davies and his Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger (Toby Jones) have to weigh up the risks involved in running a story that no one seems prepared to substantiate. When they do publish, the pair and their paper are left horribly exposed—as Davies explains, “to make a story newsworthy requires multiple news outlets, but on this issue… crickets.”
Fleet Street aren’t interested, the police aren’t either, and by the end of episode one, Davies and Jones are seated to front a select committee, with the Guardian management leaning on them to make amends and apologise. You’d think there’s not much more to this series—if you didn’t know there were six more episodes to come—and episode two picks up after a select committee cliffhanger with… well, what feels like a totally different show (so much so, I literally had to check I was still watching the right thing).
Satirical Big Short-seque joke-filled drama with lots of monologue directly aimed at the viewer goes out the window, replaced with a more straightforward grim police tale, its style straight out of Prime Suspect. Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook (Robert Carlyle) is assigned to an unsolved axe murder, tasked with running a public-facing investigation that’s designed to spook suspects who are under surveillance.
Tonally, The Hack has become a totally different show, but so successfully does it transform itself into a new form, that we’re engrossed by Cook’s policing and personal challenges—particularly as they increasingly intersect. You’ll barely spare a thought for where the show left off with Nick Davies, besides occasionally wondering how this is all going to come together.
Despite the drastic change in style, The Hack’s second episode is piercing the veil of similar topics—surveillance, police chumminess with power, and the dubious ethics of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. But having just seen these two eps, I’m as curious as anyone to see how the parallel tales combine over the remainder of the series.
In the show’s press pack, Carlyle praises writer and executive producer Jack Thorne, who’d previously impressed with Adolescence. “He’s got something quite unique here in respect of weaving what looks like two entirely separate stories together as one,” Carlyle says. “I don’t think you can underestimate how difficult that would have been to do. There is so much information in this. So many names. I think he has created a wonderful minestrone of a piece. It’s going to be right up there with one of Jack’s best things.”
Elsewhere in the press pack, Jack Thorne remembers his response to the challenge he was presented, of telling two different stories in the one show. “‘Well the interesting thing would be to tell them completely separately and then twist them together,” Thorne recalls thinking. “‘Why don’t we find a completely different set of styles for both episodes so they don’t feel like they fit together at first? Then gradually they do.’”
“It felt like an audience going, ‘Oh, here’s episode one. I understand the vocabulary of this show.’ Episode two, ‘Am I watching the wrong thing?’ Then going, ‘OK, why have they done that? Why have they made that choice?’ I think audiences are hungry for change.”
Toby Jones, who plays Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, saw a similarity with his wildly successful, agenda-setting Mr Bates vs The Post Office, another show dealing with complex issues that, as he puts it, can become undynamic as a piece of drama. “What was extraordinary was that the writer Jack Thorne had found a way. The form is not unique but it certainly had an originality about it. Not least the jump cuts between episodes one and two, two and three, three and four. Just that boldness. It’s so exciting to be part of a show that has that boldness within it.”
The acclaimed writer of Adolescence revisiting scandals ripped from the headlines with pinches of The Big Short, Mr Bates and Prime Suspect? Sounds like a sure bet, and sure enough, two episodes in, I’m hooked by the confident, not overplayed style and swept up in its suspense and its characters’ courage—Thorne’s narrative ambition met by top drawer performances from the cast. Will subsequent episodes take us into space or the realm of animation? Probably not, but wherever it goes, I’m excited to see where The Hack takes us next.
