We Just Decided To

I've barely started with my London trip recap, but I'm going to pause for a day to address something topical -- last night's premiere of HBO's new series The Newsroom. This is the latest creation from writer Aaron Sorkin, the man behind Sports Night and The West Wing, and the DNA of this series is something of a fusion of the two.

As the bland title would suggest, the series is set in a newsroom, and focuses on a news anchor who finally cracks in public under the pressure of constantly withholding his own opinions and fighting the urge to (to borrow a phrase from the first episode) "speak truth to stupid." His network boss brings in a new executive producer to rebuild the newscast, a woman who has a romantic history with the anchor. Drama and hijinks ensue.

The West Wing was a form of dramatic wish fulfillment. It depicted a government, a president, a presidential staff that was as smart, effective, honest, and noble as you would hope would or could exist in the real world. The Newsroom seems to be crafted by Aaron Sorkin to be the same thing for broadcast journalism; it wants to depict the kind of challenging, informative, intelligent news program you would hope could exist in the real world.

The Newsroom does approach at least one major thing very differently from The West Wing, however. It's revealed a bit into the first episode that the series is actually set in the recent past, and the real past, rather than an imagined present. The characters take on an actual news story from 2010, and present the "hard-hitting journalism" approach that no one actually took as the story was breaking. I'm assuming that intersections with real history will be part of the fabric of this show, and I think that could add an interesting layer to that wish fulfillment I spoke of.

The cast of the show is exceptional. Jeff Daniels stars, and is well cast to trade on a career mostly full of characters designed to charm and pull you in; his character here is a prickly and jaded curmudgeon that's pushing people away. Daniels seems like he'll make the character likeable, and he certainly has the facility for Sorkin's language.

Other more well known faces in the cast include Sam Waterston and Emily Mortimer. After just one episode, though, it's hard to see either of their characters as more than stand-ins for similar characters on Sorkin's Sports Night (played there by Felicity Huffman and Robert Guillaume).

Actually, this leads into the most significant flaw I see in the series -- it hasn't immediately carved out its own turf yet. The characters are similar to those employed in Sorkin's earlier shows. The premise is perhaps too similar to those same shows. The characters, not yet having developed much personality of their own, speak mostly in "Sorkin neutral" -- a cool and heightened style of dialogue that's fun, to be sure, but a patter that reveals more of the writer behind the words that the people speaking them.

Don't get me wrong... I'm thrilled to have an Aaron Sorkin show back on TV. I liked what I saw, and I'll be watching new episodes. But I acknowledge that right now, I'm probably just basking in the glow of having Aaron Sorkin back on my TV. I'm hoping that the show itself grows and develops over the coming episodes, because there is room for improvement.