13 replies to this topic

[Overstreet]

Since I think SportsNight remains Sorkin's best work, I'm really looking forward to this:

Quote

Aaron Sorkin long-gestating drama set behind the scenes of a nightly cable news show is becoming a reality. HBO has closed a deal for a pilot order to the project, which reunites The Social Network writer with the movie's producer Scott Rudin. Both are executive producing the pilot, which will be filmed later this year.

In his research for the show, Sorkin spent time at Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews' MSNBC shows as well as at Fox News Channel and CNN programs, but the TV personalities he shadowed are not expected to be involved in the HBO show.

Edited by Overstreet, 20 December 2011 - 12:02 AM.

[Overstreet]

Nice.

Quote

Jeff Daniels is in negotiations for the male lead in Aaron Sorkin's HBO drama pilot set behind the scenes of a cable news show.

[Overstreet]

Emily Mortimer!

And the series may be titled More As This Story Develops... which is an interesting title, but I think it lacks punch.

Edited by Overstreet, 02 May 2011 - 04:31 PM.

[Gavin Breeden]

Would love a new Aaron Sorkin series, especially one that stars Jeff Daniels. I would also love to see Sorkin's critique of cable news networks and the "24-hour news cycle."

I'm currently re-watching "Sports Night" and I'd forgotten how terrific it is.

Quote

And the series may be titled More As This Story Develops... which is an interesting title, but I think it lacks punch.

Yeah, hopefully that is just the working title.

Edited by Gavin Breeden, 07 June 2011 - 08:46 PM.

[Overstreet]

HBO has picked it up for a full series.

Sam Waterston is playing the boss? Awesome.

[Overstreet]

Jane Fonda has joined the cast. And the show's title may have been changed to the underwhelming Newsroom.

(Actually, The Underwhelming Newsroom could be interesting.)

[NBooth]

[NBooth]

[Joel C]

Coming to HBO, the long-awaited sequel: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip II: The Newsroom.

[Thom Wade]

I am liking the looks of the promos I am seeing on HBO right now...far more interesting than I was initially. I appreciate Sorkin's writing...but I just was not initially all that intrigued by the subject.

[NBooth]

Alyssa Rosenberg hates it:

Quote

It would be easier to overlook this persistent unpleasantness if The Newsroom had hard truths to utter about the state of American political discourse or piercing insights into the workings of cable news. But Sorkin seems unaware or unwilling to admit that quite a lot of people like polarized cable news. Fox & Friends, the conspiracy-theory peddling morning show with a Stanford-educated anchor who regularly plays dumb, is the highest-rated morning show on cable television. People have their own facts, something Will bemoans, not simply because his fellow anchors have fed them those alternate worldviews, but because cable news has found it profitable to cater to conspiracies and angers already well-entrenched among Americans. Suggesting that an abrasive Keith Olbermann clone—and no matter how much Sorkin protests, Will resembles no one so much as Sorkin's prior muse for Sports Night—can show the people a great light is simultaneously naively optimistic in its assessment of American television viewers and a kind of blinkered gesture of noblesse oblige.

Over at Think Progress, having seen a few more episodes, she adds:

Quote

When it isn’t condescending to women, The Newsroom makes a fetish of nastiness. Will’s aggression is what’s presented as admirable, his ability to fillet someone dumb, rather than his ability to elicit new information. And that’s a huge problem for the show’s presentation of the news business. There’s no actually anything admirable or interesting about gutting a college student for asking a dumb question at a forum, or lecturing Tea Party adherents about the wealth of the Koch Brothers: instead, it’s an attempt to appeal to the mean, superior, lizard parts of our brains. Sorkin wants Will to be an alternative to the shouty creeps who literally are meant to make Will—and us—feel physically ill in the opening sequence. Will may be an ass of Sorkin’s creation. But that doesn’t mean he’s not an ass.

[Josh Hurst]

Sepinwall is also pretty negative, calling the show smug and sanctimonious. It also sounds like Sorkin has run out of new ideas; everything here sounds like it's recycled from SportsNight and The West Wing.

[BethR]

Emily Nussbaum's New Yorker review also acknowledges that the show has some of Sorkin's strengths from past work like SportsNight and The West Wing, making it energetic and "exciting to watch," but she says episodes 2, 3, 4 get worse and there are six more. I suppose it's conceivable that the show could get better. Such things have happened, but if you only have ten episodes to work with...

I completely agree with her on this point:

Quote

Sorkin’s shows are the type that people who never watch TV are always claiming are better than anything else on TV. The shows’ air of defiant intellectual superiority is rarely backed up by what’s inside—all those Wagnerian rants, fingers poked in chests, palms slammed on desks, and so on. In fact, “The Newsroom” treats the audience as though we were extremely stupid....

...But if the storytelling were more confident, it could take a breath and deliver drama, not just talking points. Instead, the deck stays stacked. Whenever McAvoy delivers a speech or slices up a right-winger, the ensemble beams at him, their eyes glowing as if they were cultists. The series turns Will McAvoy into the equivalent of the character Karen Cartwright, on “Smash,” the performer who the show keeps insisting is God’s gift to Broadway.

Read more http://www.newyorker...m#ixzz1yZUw5MOv

[Tyler]

HBO posted the first episode on YouTube.

Edited by Tyler, 25 June 2012 - 12:25 PM.