WATCH: How BBC America’s ‘The Hour’ Recreated 1950s Britain

Romola Garai in 'The Hour'

As Mad Men and films like Good Night, and Good Luck showed us, the “neat and tidy” 1950s had striking parallels to the present day.

But, man, they truly had style back then, didn’t they? Conservative, yet with a rip-roaring undercurrent of sex.

BBC America’s new drama The Hour, which goes behind-the-scenes of a fictional BBC investigative news program in 1956, gives us a British take on the decade that brought us rock ‘n’ roll and the poodle skirt. In an exclusive behind-the-scenes video released today via The Guardian, stars Dominic West and Romola Garai provide the historical context of the series, while production designer Eve Stewart leads us on a tour of the set. (Get a gander at those enormous old-school Telex machines.)

Romola Garai (Emma) is lovely, but I don’t think she’s ever been more beautiful than she is on this show:

Here’s the BBC2 trailer that launched earlier this month: