No flaking out in old TV world

THE Newsreader is much more fun than its dull title suggests.

The Aussie drama is set in a Melbourne TV newsroom in the Crocodile Dundee 80s.

But, snowflakes beware, these hard-bitten newsmen commit multiple offences against modern manners.

They smoke, drink, swear and exhibit more cheerful “isms” than a Sir Les Patterson DVD.

Anna Torv sparkles as news anchor Helen Norville, unflappable on air but “a warzone on legs” when the cameras stop rolling.

She calls herself “a disaster”, is undermined by her co-anchor and gets dubbed “a nightmare” with “a face like a slapped arse” by colleagues because she wants to cover proper news rather than lightweight guff.

When Lindsay, Helen’s bluntspeaking pig of a boss, pushes her too far, she swallows so many pills the Happy Mondays could have used her as a rattle.

Salvation comes in the form of rookie reporter Dale Jennings, an ambitious producer whose first live newsdesk appearance could have been subtitled Struggles With My Autocue.

Lindsay orders him to produce Helen and steer her away from human interest stories – “cross-eyed single mothers, Aids and Christ knows what”.

Instead, she moulds him into a newsreader and her lover – talk about “this just in!” The soapy plots play out against huge news stories starting with 1986’s Challenger disaster, with Chernobyl to come.

It’s the best drama on terrestrial TV, in an admittedly slow week, and it gives you a glimpse of how stressful flying-by-your-pants live broadcasting can be. The casual racism – a Korean woman being asked to translate Japanese – has the ring of truth. But if anything, the makers have watered down the period.

Odds on, there would’ve been more effing and blinding back then, more sex, more smoking, more boozing and far bluer language. I miss all that.