Early on in The Hack – Adolescence writer Jack Thorne’s new series about the News International phone hacking scandal – Guardian journalist Nick Davies appears on the Today programme to promote his 2008 book, Flat Earth News. It is an indictment of the contemporary British press; its sloppiness and corruption. “The logic of journalism has been overwhelmed by the logic of commercialism,” he tells the host and a glowering Stuart Kuttner, the managing editor of the News of the World. Nowadays, says Davies, so-called reporters are simply “passive processors of unchecked second-hand material”.
My first thought is: OK, this is not your common-or-garden ITV drama. No hand-holding, no pandering, no schmaltz; we’re about to get a proper, grownup deep dive into the tabloid malfeasance – illegal surveillance, toxic power plays – that Davies began exposing in this newspaper in 2009. Bring on the machiavellian office politics, the labyrinthine narratives of your Successions, your Industrys, your Line of Dutys. (My next thought is: second-hand material? What, like yet another dramatisation of a recent major news story?)
But The Hack (Wednesday 24 September, 9pm, ITV1) loses its nerve pretty quickly. This opening episode casts Davies (David Tennant at his chameleonic best in a frizzy grey wig and comfortingly 90s leather jacket and jeans combo) as our fourth-wall breaking guide, apparently determined to inject some zaniness into proceedings. We witness his attempts to begin his (real, brilliant) 2014 book Hack Attack, an account of the investigation that eventually helped destroy Kuttner’s paper and root out some of the rot at the heart of the British establishment. “Shit!” he groans to camera after struggling to formulate an opening sentence. Relatable content for all writers – even if it is immediately undermined by his slightly unconvincing second go: “My name is Nick Davies. I am a journalist.” (Useful exposition though!)
Further surreal flourishes arrive. Tube adverts come to life, as do the posters on the wall of Davies’s study. Characters are given pseudonyms such as “Detective Buzz Aldrin”. When he meets his first source, Davies explains he must keep his identity secret – an eminently graspable fact that is nevertheless hammered home via a jarringly random parade of celebrity cameos.
You suspect The Hack doesn’t fully trust viewers to stay interested in the subject matter. To wit: we’re also treated to a trite subplot about Davies’s home life involving his incredibly reasonable ex-wife and a bullied teenage son. Disappointing for lovers of quasi-intellectual drama, but understandable. The Hack has a lot in common with ITV’s colossal hit of last year, Mr Bates vs the Post Office – both prominently feature Toby Jones (here he plays former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, despite being his physical inverse), cover a technology-based scandal and share a theme of maddening injustice in the UK – and is probably gunning for the same impact. Yet this is no easily digestible tale of brave, innocent civilians taking on The Man. Here, journalists are both the heroes and the villains – as are the police and politicians. It’s infuriating but not heart-rending. It doesn’t write itself.
The crowd-pleasing pizzazz is justifiable, then. Besides, if you don’t like the silly stuff, wait for the second episode, which chronicles the investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan by Met DCS Dave Cook (Robert Carlyle) in the manner of a more traditional hardboiled police procedural. (Having only seen the first two episodes, I do wonder what else is in store: Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson’s affair as a cheesy studio sitcom? The Leveson inquiry redone in the style of a musical?)
Wherever The Hack goes next, I hope it manages to capture the significance of this sprawling, spectacular story – one that reveals the cold hard truth about how this country truly operates. Tennant has the ability to make anything sound exciting; he can carry this. Hopefully there’s more Steve Pemberton as Rupert Murdoch. As ever with these ripped-from-the-headlines shows, we know exactly how things pan out: some people who believed they could operate above the law got their comeuppance, of a kind. To air their dirty laundry again is to mete out another small dose of justice.