Get Your First Look at Series 2 of The Hour, Premiering on BBC America November 28

The Hour, the series that many called Britain’s answer to Mad Men last year, is back for a second series this month. If you’ve never seen The Hour, well, it’s sort of what would happen if you crossed Mad Men with HBO’s The Newsroom and also you were given the extra bonus present of Ben Whishaw in snazzy 1950s suits as the icing on top. (Yes, newly swoony geek girls everywhere, this is your new Q from the latest Bond film, Skyfall. He’s also quite a good actor. Enjoy.)

Series 1 ran here in America in the summer of 2011 and was one of my surprise favorite dramas last year –extremely well-acted, very suspenseful, and the sort of intelligent television that respects it viewers enough to assume that they’re going to keep up with it.

The news drama returns to BBC Two tomorrow night in the UK, but we won’t have to wait very long to see Series 2 for ourselves here in the States, as The Hour will premiere as part of BBC America’s Dramaville block on November 28. So we’ve only got a couple of weeks to wait! Huzzah!

Series 2 will jump ahead from the end of last season to late 1957 and Peter Capaldi will join the cast as new Head of News Randall Brown, who will shake things up at “The Hour.” Hector will rethink his position with the show, Bel will fight to keep her program alive and Freddie will return to “The Hour’s” co-host chair (to the shock of everyone) and work to expose yet another cover-up (to the shock of no one). Because this is The Hour, though, you should bank on their being a heaping dose of conspiracy, temptation and paranoia of some variety thrown in there to complicate things on all fronts. Want to know more? Keep scrolling.

BBC America Trailer: BBC America loves us the most, apparently, because they’ve put together an extended Series 2 trailer for The Hour. Here, we can see that Hector seems headed for some sort of run-in with some not so nice organized crime types and ends up in jail, facing what appears to be serious humiliation and scandal. What’s the real story? (Here’s my conspiracy, I expect!) We’ll just have to watch and see.

BBC Two Trailer: The BBC trailer is very atmospheric, but you get les s of a sense of the overall plot arc for this series beyond the fact that Hector is clearly having some Serious Issues concerning Something Scandalous. That said, this trailer has about 30% more Whishaw in it (bonus!) and I will always love watching Freddie getting his whole noble reporter act on.

Never Seen The Hour Before? No worries, BBC America has also put together a handy dandy 90 second video that will sum up Series 1 for you. It really is an excellent drama and well worth watching, so this is worth a look to see if the show’s your cup of tea:

Other Extras of Interest: Promotional photos from the first episode of Series 2, courtesy of the Radio Times can be found here, and the cast has been doing lots of interesting interviews in the days leading up to the premiere. Get through the next two weeks by reading about chats with stars Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai, as well as newcomer Hanna Tointon. 

Anyone else out there planning to be glued to their TVs when Freddie, Bel and Hector return?