The Devil’s Hour

Perception
Committee

The Devil’s Hour
Directed by various
UK October 2022
Six Episodes

Okay, so The Devil’s Hour is a new thriller series out from the UK and I am going to try very hard to write this one without spoilers. Mainly because, once you know the answer to what’s going on... you know... and a lot of people will probably get there themselves without my help. Also, though, because it’s a brilliantly executed rendition of a currently popular movie trope but it’s done with a certain amount of skill, enough to properly pull it all off quite effectively.

Okay, so I can give you the main premise because it will tell you absolutely nothing about what this show is about. You may remember the magic time 3.33am, popularised in modern cinema by films like The Haunting Of Emily Rose, as the time when a person is woken by the devil or some demonic force due to the time’s representational mockery of the three who are... in religious mythology... the father, the son and the Holy ghost. The idea here is that the show’s central protagonist Lucy Chambers, played by the always brilliant Jessica Raine, is awoken from nightmarish dreams and... lets call them flashbacks... at exactly 3.33am every night (okay, morning) for pretty much the majority of her life. She is separated from her husband (played by the Cineworld Adverts Phil Dunster) and lives with her strange son, Isaac (played astonishingly by Benjamin Chivers). Isaac has no emotional response to anything in his life, is susceptible to the commands of others, feels no pain and sees things which aren’t there. He is going to a child psychologist played by Meera Syal (one of many he’s seen) but no breakthroughs are being made. Meanwhile, a detective played by Nikesh Patel is trying to find a man who is abducting and killing people. These two worlds collide when Isaac dissappears for a while (found by Lucy’s seemingly schizophrenic/dementia ridden mother) and the man behind it all, Gideon Shepherd (played by the great Peter Capaldi), is making like Hannibal Lector as we crosscut between a future interview between him, Lucy and the detective... and events as they happen.

And that’s all I can say other than, the title and the premise of the show are obviously there to make the audience believe that this is some kind of horror concoction but, as I suspect most people will realise by the second episode in, this main hook of the 3.33am (which may be better written as 33rpm in terms of the ultimate explanation for everything, it seems to me, as a visual metaphor) and the choice to shoot the story in the visual and audio language of a horror film, is really just a red herring. It’s a bit of misdirection to, perhaps, try to stop the audience from guessing what’s really going on too quickly.

Certainly, it’s in one sense a police procedural show but, also has strong, dominant elements of another genre but I don’’t want to say too much. What I will say about the story however, is that it’s amazingly complex and the execution echoes that. The editing is so good on this with various bits of crosscutting between dreams, reality and so on and... yeah, that’s good because it really has to be. Hats off to the writer here but I suspect a lot of the final cut was partially shaped, more so than most shows, in the editing room to enhance the twists in the story.

So, yeah, can’t say too much. It’s well shot although, pulling out a directorial signature style is hard given that the show has multiple directors. But I can talk about the actors because, well, they are amazing. Jessica Raine is someone who my regular readers may remember from both her appearance in the Doctor Who episode Hide (reviewed here) and, perhaps more importantly, from her turn as producer Verity Lambert in An Adventure In Space And Time (reviewed here). She is absolutely the backbone of this show and really carries things... especially since Capaldi’s appearances, which you might at first think take place in her dreams (and probably they do, also... it would make sense), are fairly limited for the first four episodes. Nikesh Patel is equally great, given a gift of a character who hates blood and the aftermath of the violent crime scenes he has to go investigate (which becomes particularly poignant in one instance... but shh... spoilers). Patel takes this gift and really runs with it, making another credible character to help carry parts of the story. And as for Benjamin Chivers... well, he’s so good that even I was misdirected by his incredible performance (I assumed a grown up version of his character was also appearing in the series at the same time as he... but that wasn’t quite the case... although see the end of this article for further speculation). Now, it has to be said, that once the explanation you kind of see coming is explained by Gideon, with the help of a knotted shoestring (although it’s a nice spin on a popular concept, it has to be said), I felt a little left in the dark about Isaac’s character. It made sense up until a certain point but nobody, it seems to me, explained the ‘why?’ of that character... but that’s one of the strengths of the show. It doesn’t try and spoon feed you all the explanations so much and there are things left unsaid which will bring your own deductions to, I’m sure.

And then there’s Capaldi, of course. He plays Gideon pitch perfect and, by the end of the show, you will have to decide as to whether he is an evil person or, as he believes (and so do I, to an extent) a good, righteous person. Certainly he kills people and does horrible things to them and, yeah, with a role written like that you need someone as good as Capaldi to be able to walk that tightrope and make the character real and somewhat sympathetic. He once again proves why he’s such a great performer and, I was pleased to see, the quality of the acting by Raine and Patel means he managed to be a powerhouse without actually stealing the scenes from under them. Everyone holds their own beautifully in this and it was a pleasure to watch something so well made, to be honest.

Added to this, we have a pretty good score by The Newton Brothers which, alas, is only available so far as a horrible electronic download rather than on a proper CD where it belongs so, yeah, doesn’t look like I’ll be able to revisit this as a stand alone listen anytime soon. A shame really.

Now it seems some web sites think there will be a follow up season.* While I thought the ending of this was brilliant and really quite final, the nature of the basic premise, once revealed, means that all the cast of characters can return for future shows for sure. I’m just not sure why they’d want to do that because, it seems to me, to be a one trick pony in that respect. Brilliant trick as it is. But I’m not complaining either way... lets see what happens. All I know for sure is that The Devil’s Hour is one of the best things to hit TV screens over the last few years and it’s got a lot of power to it, plus a lot to recommend in it (I absolutely loved one ‘throwaway’ shot of a mobile phone... you’ll know it when you see it... to create a sense of time setting). And so I do... absolutely recommend this one unashamedly. Definitely worth some time.

*As of the day this review goes up, series 2 and 3 have beeen announced, including the obvious returning cast members. Really not sure what more that they can add to the story (apart from the possibly obvious true identity of Isaac) but, have at it.