“The whole issue is so complex. And there’s so many layers to it, because we’ve got serving police officers accepting money from a newspaper, people at the very top of the police being closely associated with politicians and playing a political game, and we’ve got politicians clearly in bed with the media.” That was phone-hacking victim Graham Foulkes speaking to Dateline reporter Evan Williams in 2011.
If it was complicated then, the whole affair was only halfway through its obnoxious cycle of failed investigations, misfired prosecution attempts, cancelled legislative measures and bungled trials. And it’s not over yet. ITV’s new seven-part miniseries The Hack, streaming on Stan, finishes with a summary of where things have gone since the conclusion of its part of the story in 2014, and the message is, essentially, backwards. Rodney Tiffen, reviewing the state of affairs for Inside Story in 2024 chronicled a roller-coaster of spoilers. Most of the bad actors are still in their roles.
The series starts with Guardian journalist Nick Davies trying to write the opening sentence of Hack Attack, his attempt to give a comprehensive account of what he learned during six years of indefatigable investigative work. To a soundtrack of scrabbling keys, he’s deleting his own introductory statements, one after another. How do you tell this story?
From a production point of view, the creators have adopted two successful recent models. Writer Jack Thorne has to his credit the Netflix series Adolescence, whose unflinching focus on a harrowing social crisis led to multiple awards, including a swag of Primetime Emmys. The 2024 limited series Mr Bates versus the Post Office, a social justice drama also from ITV, starred Toby Jones, who plays Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in The Hack.
Both those series tackled big, complex sociopolitical issues, but the vast quagmire of the hacking scandal presents another order of difficulty for a team creating television drama, even when they have a top-of-the-range cast and seven hours of screen time, more than twice the length of a major feature film. Their strategy is to focus on two figures at the centre of intersecting lines of events, both of whom entered the picture in around 2002.
Davies, backed by Rusbridger, fronts the investigation. Looking permanently dishevelled in Davies’s trademark worn jeans and leather jacket, David Tennant plays him as man who doesn’t eat or sleep much, and has the effect of disturbing the peace every time he enters a room because he’s always after something and usually just been thwarted in his quest.
In the convention of breaking the fourth wall, he treats the camera like an ever-present witness and confidante, sometimes just giving a look that says what he can’t say at that particular moment, but at key points delivering recaps and contextual narrative to clarify the ever more confusing plotlines. The convention is sometimes used (as in Fleabag and House of Cards) to provide psychological insight into the lead character, but here it harks back to traditions of social realism where the audience are co-opted as witnesses in a crisis of truth and justice.
While Davies skirts the quagmire, Metropolitan police detective Dave Cook finds himself pulled into it. He’s a assigned to a cold case dating back to 1987, when the body of private investigator Daniel Morgan was found in a pub car park with an axe embedded in his skull. One of the suspects, Jonathan Rees (Andrew Whipp), was serving a seven-year jail sentence on another charge, but the police attempts to link him and four other associates to the murder kept getting embroiled in ways that put the investigators under suspicion.
Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery of the Catford police, who headed the first investigation, had been working for Morgan’s company, Southern Investigations. And Southern Investigations had been working on commission for News International, obtaining information about celebrities and others in the public eye by illegal means. Rees, who had a network of contacts across many domains, had received hefty payments from News of the World for his efforts.
By the time Cook is brought in, four prior investigations have had no consequences other than intensified internal tensions and some blatant intimidation. Episode two shows Cook being harassed at his family home by masked men and chased by a sinister black van as he’s driving his children to school. His wife (Eve Myles) suffers from PTSD and is at her wits’ end.
Robert Carlyle plays Cook as a counterpoint to Tennant’s Davies. He is a seasoned realist and skilled observer whose reserve is only broken by the threats to his family. It’s through him that the human impact of the saga is really brought home, while victims of the hacking are featured only briefly.
The episode as a whole exhibits the strongest and weakest aspects of the series’ approach to dramatisation. Producer Patrick Spence has explained a strategic decision to introduce Cook’s investigation as if it is a separate narrative, leaving viewers puzzled as to whether they are still watching the same series. That way, the point of intersection gains sharper impact. Perhaps. But it’s also confusing, and there’s more than enough confusion in this already. Photos on a pin board between short sequences from police interviews do little to help viewers keep track of the multiple suspects, who are never effectively realised as individuals.
Other names are thrown around. Andy Coulson (Mark Stobbart) and Glen Mulcaire are murky background figures, travelling between various frames of the investigation, though in the larger political situation they were very much in the foreground.
Coulson, editor of News of the World from 2003–07, had become communications director for the Conservative Party before being appointed communications adviser to prime minister David Cameron. Mulcaire, who was working as a private investigator in association with News of the World journalist Clive Goodman, had been found guilty of illegal phone hacking in 2007 but was hired three years later as a senior investigator for a company run by former Metropolitan Police commissioner John Stevens, who had become Baron Stevens in 2005.
Police, parliament and the press form an ugly moebius strip, as Cook begins to realise, and the prospect of getting the law to cut through it all doesn’t look clear.
One figure comes into focus with stunning effectiveness, however. Rebekah Brooks, editor of News of the World from 2000 to 2003, is typically seen at some distance from the cameras, which gives the actor and writer latitude in interpreting her character during a critical scene. Cook manages to secure an interview with her on the connection with Southern Investigations.
“Rebekah’s very charming,” says his colleague as they await her entrance. Rosalie Craig plays her with all the charm of Cruella de Ville, controlling the exchanges with patronising smiles and glib disclaimers. Cook’s complaints of personal harassment by an agency she appears to be employing don’t cause a ripple in the smooth performance. “I’ll look into it,” she says and stands, briskly drawing the meeting to a close. “Thank you for your service.” It’s the kind of behaviour anyone might encounter from a powerful executive used to brushing off annoying distractions.
What really burns is the attitude of those around her. We see Cook with the steely expression of someone who sees exactly what he is up against, trying to ignore the egregious sycophancy of his fellow officer. As they leave the building, Brooks is visible in the distance, warmly embracing the police commissioner. It’s all about the difference between those who see the game for what it is and those who choose to play it, not just because they’re pressured into cooperation, but through keen opportunism and their own naive vanity.
The Hack’s later episodes gain momentum when Rusbridger calls in the New York Times, which is unconstrained by Britain’s strict sub judice rules, and offers them the Guardian’s files on the case. Four Pulitzer prize–winners are sent over, and the story breaks as a major scoop, with new details, in America. Then, with the discovery that hackers interfered with the phone of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler before her body was found, the sluice gates open and angry headlines appear in all the major British news outlets.
Under pressure, the Conservative government appoints the Leveson inquiry, which carries the promise of a decisive turning point. All the principle figures in the scandal, led by none other than Rupert Murdoch (played with a dodgy Australian accent by Steve Pemberton), finally have to face questioning, and Davies gets his chance to provide a full public testimony, laying down the ethical parameters at risk of erasure.
In dramatic terms, it’s a classic example of what might be called the double court: we the viewers are addressed as the jury, so the courtroom before the camera is replicated by the court of public opinion, the ultimate arena for any case serious enough to call for the judgement of history. But this is not history yet. Hacked Off campaigners are hoping the series may help to influence what happens next.
The hardest thing to reckon with about this whole rotten business is that it remains unresolved. Leveson left the inquiry with stern recommendations that weren’t acted upon, despite David Cameron’s promise to do so. Phase two of Leveson has never happened. Keir Starmer, who as director of public prosecutions brought an unsuccessful case against Brooks and her associates in Leveson 1, abandoned his promise to pursue the investigation when he became prime minister. “Truth is on the march,” said Emil Zola, “and nothing will stop it.” If only. It seems, rather, we’re still waiting for something to stop the lies. •
