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On Television |
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"THE NEWSROOM"
“The Newsroom,” premieres at 10 p.m. Sunday June 24 on HBO. |
Aaron Sorkin's backstage
view of a TV news network
of TheColumnists.com
Cable TV news channels.
CNN, Fox and MSNBC, among others, are there for viewers 24/7.
But did you ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes of these
shows?
HBO’s new 10-episode drama “The Newsroom” shows
us just that… but remember, this is a fictional cable news
network. Created by Aaron Sorkin, who won an Academy Award for
writing “The Social Network” and who also gave us TV’s
“The West Wing,” the series looks at the public and
private lives of a driven group of dedicated news types, led
by news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels)
Viewer favorite McAvoy anchors the 8 p.m. flagship news show
“News Night” on the ACN Network. He’s a newscaster
who has become stoic, complacent, a play-it-safe guy who avoids
ruffling feathers with anything resembling politics in his newscasts.
But at a public forum his totally out of character remarks regarding
American patriotism ruffle feathers and the network makes him
take several weeks off in the form of a forced vacation. When
he returns to the job he finds his staff has all moved on to
other shows, and he has to work with new staffers and a new producer,
MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), a woman he was romantically
involved with in the past.
McAvoy’s other new staffers are mostly young, including
his new senior producer Jim Harper (John Gallagher, Jr.), who
worked with McHale in Iraq and Afghanistan and remains one of
her friends. Other new staffers are Margaret Jordan (Alison Pill)
a former intern and now an associate producer; Sloan Sabbith
(Olivia Munn), the financial news reporter, and Neal Sampat (Dev
Patel), who writes McAvoy’s blog and searches the Internet
for stories others may have missed.
Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski), who is a lot
like McAvoy and who is his former producer, has moved on to the
program following McAvoy’s show. He’s also having a
romantic relationship with Margaret Jordan, and seems to hang
around a lot with the new “News Night” team. The network
news president Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) is an old-school
guy who answers only to Leona Lansing (Jane Fonda), who runs
the corporation that owns the ACN Network.
The table is set but all does not run smoothly. McAvoy isn’t
a very nice guy and the staff does not really like him. He’s
just not very likeable. McHale is out to change McAvoy and how
he delivers the newscast. Early on she tells him he is “the
Jay Leno of news anchors because you don’t bother anyone.”
Skinner has brought McHale on board in hopes she can bring out
the passion in him — to challenge him to abandon his old,
middle-of-the-road, play-it-safe approach to the news, and==gasp(!)--toss
out an opinion now and then. Slowly he moves into those uncharted
waters, but not without a lot of bumps along the road.
Though the series is set at a fictional network, the news stories
it covers are recent real news events, such as the massive oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico. When this story breaks, the show
picks up steam as everyone on the team immediately jumps into
action to get the details of the story as quickly and accurately
as possible and get it on the air.
Woven into the episodes are what is going on in the staffers’
personal lives— the show’s soap opera-ish elements—that
often spill over onto the job.
The acting is excellent all around, with Waterston, the veteran
from "Law & Order," chewing up every scene he’s
in. It made me realize all over again why I watched “Law
& Order”: It was because of his great work on that series.
Daniels, mainly known for his big screen work, is fine as a sleeping
giant of an anchor who is finally awakened by the fire ignited
in him by Mortimer’s McHale character. Mortimer, also known
primarily for her work on the big screen, is a gentle but tough
producer still carrying a torch for McAvoy. The show does tend
to slow when she seemingly goes all “girly” and, I
feel, out of character when she tries to find out just who McAvoy
is dating.
And don’t forget Jane Fonda—in
her brief appearances as the Woman in Charge of It All. Her character
is tough as nails and her back and forth “discussions”
with Waterston about “News Night” are reason enough
to watch this series.
All of the characters are passionate and opinionated. There is
a lot of verbal back and forth sparring between McAvoy and McHale,
as well as between several of the younger staffers. A little
of this is fine, but at times it seems labored—and way too
talky. And preachy.
Should you watch this series? Yes, if you are a news junkie and
wonder how the news gets on the air. Yes, if you are a fan of
Sam Waterston, Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer. Yes, if you are
a fan of Sorkin and loved “The West Wing.” “The
Newsroom” is pure Sorkin… opinionated, preachy, brash
and, yes, wait for it, political!
©2012 by Donna J.
Plesh. This column first posted June 18, 2012.
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can comment on this column online. Please address your message
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