David Tennant and Toby Jones star in ITV’s dramatisation of the phone-hacking scandal. This slow-burn, heavy on specialist dialogue, exposes the complexity of investigative journalism and how those outside the industry often romanticise the journalist’s role. Regardless of importance, impact or public interest, good journalism still needs amplification. If you’re not endorsed by others – even your competitors – you won’t get reach. Without reach there’s no traction.
In this way The Hack reveals the internal forces that work against journalism itself with as much weight as it does the repugnant amorality of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Once you’ve ploughed through seven dense episodes of evidence and backstory, the payoff is bleak. Years of tenacious investigation and eventual accountability result in a newspaper title being cut, one slippery Downing Street Comms Director resigning, and former editors quietly reinstated in senior posts.
The turning point – both in print and on screen – comes with the discovery that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone was hacked during the search for her. Toby Jones plays Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger with quiet pragmatism and solid self-assurance, skewering the stereotype of the belligerent, power-wielding editor and projecting The Guardian as the cushioned, middle-class paper it’s often derided as. David Tennant brings his best teeth-chewing rumination to bear here, pacing the script’s detail.
You’ll need to pay close attention: some of the stylistic shifts are arresting if occasionally confusing. The backstory featuring Robert Carlyle (quite the starry cast when all is counted) feels like a different drama altogether, the links only really clarifying towards the end.
If you’re not interested in journalism, or if you’re hoping to see the baddies roasted, you’ll be disappointed by the time the end credits rolls. But as a primer for understand the world of journalism, its not bad.
