ITV viewers have been left divided over a “jarring” filming technique used repeatedly in new phone hacking drama The Hack.
The series, which focuses on the phone hacking scandal that led to the shutting down of the News of the World between 2002 and 2012, stars David Tennant as Guardian journalist Nick Davies, who regularly breaks the fourth wall with short monologues delivered directly to the camera.
When the first episode premiered on ITV on Wednesday (24 September), viewers criticised the asides as “tiresome” and “jarring”, with one person writing on X/Twitter: “Not sure about this breaking the fourth wall, is it necessary? Jarring.”
“Breaking the fourth wall, nowhere near as edgy as ITV thinks it is,” said another, as one said: “Not sure the straight-to-camera device is working for me.”
Other viewers argued that Tennant’s monologues added an extra layer of context to a complex story, even if the filming style did take some adjusting to.
“Stuck with it because I genuinely want to know more about what happened in the true story of #TheHack, not impressed with the acknowledgement of the camera,” one post said.
“Took a minute to get used to the style but it’s good,” wrote one viewer, as another added: “This was decent. The fourth wall breaks give it a slightly irreverent air, but it’s a really damning account of The News Of The World phone hacking.”
Other views said it was an informative show, writing: “Whoever commissioned #MrBates and #TheHack deserves a medal. This is *exactly* the kind of TV we want. Not reality TV, not cookery, not celebrity. Educate & inform.”
Another viewer asked: “How does David Tennant manage to be so utterly brilliant at everything he does?”
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Tennant appears alongside Robert Carlyle, who plays former Met Police detective chief superintendent Dave Cook, and Toby Jones as former editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger.
The script, written by Adolescence screenwriter Jack Thorne, follows Davies as he discovers evidence of the goings-on at the News of the World and Cook as he investigates the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan.
Following in the footsteps of last year’s critically acclaimed series, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, The Hack has been produced by part of the same team behind the Bafta-winning programme, which sparked widespread public outcry about the false convictions of sub-postmasters.
Speaking to James Acaster and Ed Gamble on their Off Menu podcast earlier this year, Tennant said that shooting the series had been “very intense”.
“Just because there’s a lot of quite complicated information in that,” he explained. “I’m playing a journalist who sort of broke the case open, and there’s just a lot of quite technical stuff.”
He continued: “Obviously you have to be very specific on that because there’s a lot of lawyers watching to make sure you don’t say the wrong thing.
“That was quite a long shoot and that was very intense. But you then do something like that and you’re very proud to be part of something like that. It’s one of the stories of our time that needs telling.”
In The Independent’s three-star review of the series, TV critic Nick Hilton wrote: “The balance between making the story of the investigation digestible and exposing the human toll is hard to strike, and while the chiaroscuro is occasionally effective, it’s all too often jarring.”
The Hack is available to stream on ITVX