Press
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Threatening to do for journalists what Doctor Foster did for GPS, Mike Bartlett’s latest BBC drama is also a glorious romp jam-packed with amorality, bruised egos and high stakes. Pitting fictional tabloid newspaper The Post against broadsheet The Herald, Bartlett makes a few points about the toll taken on the printed press by slashed news budgets, shaken public confidence and the internet, but his primary interest is in plot and characters.
Key players are Charlotte Riley’s workaholic Holly, deputy news editor of The Herald, who’s chasing down an apparent dead-end about a police car in a hit-and-run, Paapa Essidu’s cub reporter for The Post, bagging a major scoop on his first “death knock”, and David Suchet’s arch media mogul, ruthless and sophisticated. Stealing the show, however, is Ben Chaplin, lip-smackingly unpleasant as Duncan Allen, The Post’s oleaginous, charming and shifty editor, toying with the future of a talented Cabinet minister caught in flagrante. It’s fantastic fun, doing journalism a favour by going beyond the clichés to demonstrate that most hacks are no more or less principled, hypocritical or hardworking than anyone else. Gabriel Tate