Amazing news! I’ve found a drama with NO f lashbacks
The Newsreader
BBC2, Sunday ★★★★★
Under The Banner Of Heaven
Disney+, Wednesday ★★★★★
It is fitting, perhaps, that, as Neighbours exited – the last-ever episode was shown on Channel 5 on Friday – the best new show of the week was Australian. Not that I was ever of the Neighbours generation. I was more Crossroads, and I still worry about Shughie McFee, the chef who went to get pork chops from the freezer and was never seen again. Those were the days, when you didn’t have to bother to write out a character properly, and we weren’t that upset as we had other, weightier matters on our mind. For instance, was Amy Turtle a Russian spy? Or not?
Anyway, The Newsreader, which is also set in Melbourne, was unexpected. When I read that it’s a drama set in a TV newsroom in 1986, my initial reaction was: that sounds, erm, rather niche. But it’s terrific, with beautiful performances, compelling characters that are nuanced and, get this, no flashbacks.
The main characters all have significant back stories, but we’re trusted to understand without actually being constantly yanked back in time. I’ve only just launched my much-needed Campaign For Linear Storytelling (CFLS), where our slogan is ‘Tell it straight or not at all’, and it’s early days, but this may already be our show of the year. Quality, with no funny business.
It stars Anna Torv, who is terrific as Helen Norville, a star newsreader with big hair who is battling to be taken seriously as a journalist. In 1980s newsroom parlance she is probably a ‘ball-breaker’ but, in fact, her character is far more layered than that. Constantly berated by men, one way or another, there are days she can take it and days when she can’t, and you never know which day it’s going to be. Initially, you’ll be praying she stays composed, at least to the end of the bulletin, but here’s what you’ll come to know about Helen: no matter how much of a mess she is, no matter that she’s just suffered a panic attack, she can always put on a mask.
A bit sexist, you might think, to make the woman a mess, but the other main character, Dale Jennings (Sam Reid), is vulnerable and confused in his own way too. He is an upcoming reporter/producer who longs to be co-anchoring the News At Six with Helen, whom he worships. He lacks confidence but is wonderfully keen and phones his mother to say whenever he’s due to make an on-screen appearance.
His first try-out is a gripping, unmitigated disaster. I can’t say too much, for fear of spoilers, but as he and Helen become closer and their relationship deepens, it turns out he has also been wearing a mask. We could spool back to see what happened to him – why won’t he talk to his high-school friend Adam? – but instead the past is allowed to play out in the present (praise be!). There are six episodes (all available on iPlayer), and in the final one there’s a scene between Helen and Dale that will have you in tears.
This is all set against real-life news events – the Challenger space shuttle disaster, Chernobyl, the mounting AIDS crisis – and captures the adrenaline of a TV newsroom, while you wonder at life before the internet. (VHS tapes! Landlines! Searching through phone books!)
There are secondary characters you will become especially fond of, such as Noelene (Michelle Davidson), the PA who has ambition but is never taken seriously, and those you won’t. Their boss (William McInnes) is a snake, while Helen’s co-anchor, Geoff (Robert Taylor), is ‘a legacy reporter’ who cannot accept that he isn’t as popular as he once was but, again, it’s a complex portrait.
I binged the whole thing, unlike Under The Banner Of Heaven which, I have to say, represents everything that the CFLS was set up to fight. This is based on the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer about an exceedingly grisly, 1984 murder amid Utah’s Mormon community. So it’s a true-crime drama, and it should be fascinating, but it yanks about in time so much that, ultimately, it left me cold.
It has been adapted by Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for the Milk screenplay, was brought up a Mormon and is now the husband of Tom Daley. It’s told in three timelines (three!).
There’s the present and the police investigation being led by Inspector Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) plus, spooling back, we’re shown the murder victim, Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones) – who was killed alongside her baby daughter – marrying into a prominent Mormon family.
On top of that, we’re also presented with the life of Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in the 1820s. This last strand is as unnecessary as it is poor, with the amateurish look of a historical re-enactment for schools. Generally, this was so all over the place you were left wondering about what was meant to be the main meat here.
I understood what this was attempting to do – the subtitle of the book refers to ‘a violent faith’ – but it jumped around so much it robbed us of feeling anything in the moment. I watched two episodes (of seven) and was indifferent throughout. Tell it straight, my friend, or not at all…