Now here's a thing for a supposedly
avid TV watcher to admit: I've never seen an episode of The West
Wing. Not even five minutes, in the background, while I'm waiting
for the kettle to boil.
But, of course, I'm fully aware of the
status of Aaron Sorkin. I was even lucky enough to see him interviewed at the BFI alongside a
screening of The Social Network,
which was a bravura piece of screenwriting that deserved the Bafta
and Oscar it won.
So,
like a lot of people, I was looking forward to The
Newsroom, his new series about
the crisis facing US TV journalism in recent years. (The opener is
set in 2010, as the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, er, came to the
surface.)
It stars Jeff Daniels as Will McEvoy, an anodyne news anchor who flips out at a student journalism event when asked why the US is the best country in the world.
“It isn't” is his shock reply, and he goes on to reel off a litany of poor social indicators and reminisce how the nation was a much healthier place when it had better news coverage. “It isn't. But it could be.”
His outburst makes him persona non grata at his network, and most of his production team follow his executive producer to another gig. His big hope is the new producer parachuted onto his show: veteran war reporter - and, apparently, Will's former lover - Mackenzie MacHale (Emily Mortimer).
However,
while her dramatic role as Will's potential saviour is pretty clear,
a lot about Mackenzie's character just doesn't add up. Everything about her, from her name to her stirring patriotism, is American, but for some
reason she's played by a plummy British actress.
And
while Jeff's boss (Sam Waterson) also says that she's burnt out after
spending too much time in warzones and just wants a quiet life, she seems pretty fresh and breezy
by the time she arrives in the newsroom.
While the first
episode was full of Sorkin's trademark ping-pong dialogue,
it felt very static and linear; there was little in the way of visual
storytelling or the structural mastery that made The Social
Network so compelling. It could have played just as well on the
radio without losing much.
That characteristic
tiki-taka chatter itself was problematic. While it's undoubtedly pleasing to
encounter characters who are smarter than us (Steven Moffat has made
a fortune from it), it gets a bit tiring when every statement is
instantly met with what sounds like the zingiest thing the respondent
could possibly say.
A lot of it was also totally on-the-nose (characters saying exactly what they mean)
and often felt shoehorned in to make a point – such as the moment
when Mackenzie turns back from the office door and launches into an
unprompted oration to remind Will why it's important that the US has
a politically literate electorate.
There's clearly an
interesting discussion to be had about the fact that people can now immerse themselves in news coverage that just
reinforces their own beliefs without cross-examining them at all.
Will claims in the
episode that the US is the most polarised it's ever been, and it's
probably the same over here, epitomised by the identical, unquestioning, blank-eyed
certainty of the Guardian and the Daily Mail – like
the two factions of Lilliputians arguing in Gulliver's Travels
about which end to open their eggs.
However, Sorkin's
apparent yearning back to a pre-multichannel, pre-Internet age when a
broadcaster like Walter Cronkite could convincingly claim to speak to
and for a nation seems a little redundant.
There was enough craft in the opener to make me want to tune in again, but I
hope the series finds a bit more drama and imagination once it shakes
off its pilot and – hopefully – hits its stride.
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