Star of The Hour is a little too modern, says Bakewell

The BBC's new period drama series The Hour – which has been widely touted as the 'British Mad Men' – has been taken to task by the veteran broadcaster Joan Bakewell for making its sexy female lead character a little "too modern".

The Hour, which starts tonight, follows a 1950s team of young BBC journalists launching a new current affairs programme which seeks to throw off the stifling conventions of post-war austerity Britain.

Bakewell (above right) is forever associated with the 1960s - when she presented the BBC's Late Night Line Up and was labeled "the thinking man's crumpet" - but she actually began her BBC career in the 1950s.

So, how accurate is The Hour, she was asked by the Mail on Sunday? After a sneak preview of the first episode, Bakewell gives it full marks for its evocative sets and applauds the drama for accurately reflecting "the fact that the Fifties were a time of plentiful new chances for bright young people".

She describes the ease with which new graduates could swan into first jobs at the BBC as producers with no experience.

But she takes issue with the characterisation of Bel Rowley, the producer in The Hour, who is played by Romola Garai (above left).

Rowley wears colourful, figure-hugging outfits and is described as "fiery and passionate" by The Hour's writer Abi Morgan. But is she more a product of the swinging Sixties than still dingy 1950s London?

Bakewell says the Fifties workplace was a man's world and women "got their own way by a variety of subversive strategies – of which the use of sex appeal was the most obvious".

Rowley is "altogether too modern". Her "swinging hair and swaying body radiate the confidence that came to women only once feminism had swept away their old inferiority".

Bakewell says the truth was that "women who prospered at the BBC in the Fifties were... for the most part, unobtrusive."

• The Hour, BBC 2, July 19, 9pm ·