The Hack review: Call me an optimist, but The Hack offers a tricksy, star-stuffed ray of light for the future of journalism

The standing of the profession in the eyes of the public was – and is – low enough anyway, without the illegal hacking of people's phones.

It's an attitude shared by Nick Davies (David Tennant) in The Hack (ITV, Weds, 9pm), ITV's retelling of how the scandal broke and the effects it had on the tabloid press – not least the fact that it caused the shuttering of the News of the World.

“These so-called journalists bring our whole industry into disrepute,” he says at one point, and it's difficult to disagree.

He's depicted as a shining example of the crusading journalist, eager to go where the action is, dismissive of the latest clickbait-y listicle his editor at The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger (Toby Jones), says does well online.

He's also a good dad – on good terms with an ex-partner and giving out Aesop-like advice to his son about dung beetles.

It's a heavy-handed metaphor, which gets hammered home towards the end of this first episode – Davies is the indefatigable dung beetle, cleaning up the overflowing sewer of Fleet Street, despite obstacles, knock-backs and threats from infinitely larger predators.

And The Hack also goes heavy on Davies' back story of abuse at the hands of his terrifying mother, and abuse which, apparently, gives him the burning desire to stand up for the little guy, the victimised and the oppressed.

As he puts it, his childhood gave him “a deep-seated urge to hit back at anyone who takes power, and abuses it”.

It serves to deepen the story and explains Davies' motivation in seeming to bite the hand that feeds him, but at times the 'saviour of Fleet Street' image grates.

Especially when, having read his books Flat Earth News and Hack Attack, you understand that Davies has a deep love for journalism and journalists, and is at best disappointed and at worse sickened, by the way commercial interest has all but obliterated the public interest.

This first episode dealt with how Davies initially broke the story of the widespread hacking of people's phones – which had been dismissed as the actions of one rogue journalist after private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and the New of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman were jailed in 2007.

It could be an hour of watching Davies drinking coffee, making phone calls and click-clacking on a keyboard, but The Hack enlivens proceedings with Tennant, as Davies, regularly breaking the fourth wall, animated posters on his wall and a host of celebrity cameos.

Some work – Steve Pemberton as Rupert Murdoch, for example – but a list of well-known faces opening hotel room door as possibilities for Davies' unnamed source 'Mr Apollo' comes seems like overkill.

And it's not just Gabby Logan, Jonathan Ross and Harry Hill. There's also Rose Leslie, Patrick Baladi, Katherine Kelly and Sean Pertwee.

You can imagine many of Britain's celebrities queuing up, in fact, to get a chance for a little bit of cold revenge on the industry which invaded their privacy in such an appalling way.

And it all works, the action, such as it is, zipping by, in an entertaining enough way although Davies' dung beetle has had little to do in the way of heavy-lifting.

It could be a hatched job on Fleet Street, and journalism, but as a press optimist it reads also as a eulogy to the power of the press – to a determined reporter with good technique, willing to do the legwork rather than rely on cutting corners.

And hopefully that's what the industry will take away from it too. That we are ill-serving the public with the cheap and cheerful; that good journalism takes time and money.

And most importantly, that the public will read – and pay for – that type of journalism.