The Magic Hour

What was Mark Whitacre thinking? A rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Mark Whitacre suddenly turns whistleblower, and in so doing exposes his company's multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI. Rather than being jailed as a hero he finds himself - a little bit like a secret agent - in a hunt for evidence until, that is, the FBI start wondering exactly what is real in Whitacre's story and what is a product of his rambling imagination.

The story follows John Shuttleworth as he attempts to decipher whether southerners are "softer" than people from the north. The Sheffield-born singer/songwriter begins his quest in the Channel Islands in the hopes of travelling north from there, however he ends up getting side-tracked by producer and neighbour Ken Worthington who vanishes at the beginning. Shuttleworth doesn't actually leave the Channel Islands, he ends up having to finance the film through a series of local product placement agreements.

Set between present-day London and the idyllic British countryside before the Second World War is the story of the Keyes family. The eldest sibling Anne is a budding young actress who is in love with Foreign Office official Lawrence, but her seemingly perfect life begins to unravel when she stumbles across secret recordings of the anti-appeasement movement. While trying to discover the origin of these recordings, secrets are revealed which lead to the death of her friend. As war breaks out Anne discovers the truth and flees to London when she is caught and imprisoned, only then beginning to discover how badly she has been betrayed.