Before The Morning Show became an Emmy contender (with 16 nominations for its current third season, including outstanding drama series), The Newsroom garnered the TV Academy’s attention by examining the fast-paced world of primetime cable news. The Aaron Sorkin show, which ran on HBO for three seasons starting in 2012, took a West Wing-type approach to TV journalism, presenting the challenge of covering real-life stories from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the Boston Marathon bombing.
Jeff Daniels led the cast as Will McAvoy, anchor of the fictional evening news program News Night, whose crew — played by the likes of Emily Mortimer, Sam Waterston and Olivia Munn — are on a mission to cover the news smartly and objectively, ratings be damned. McAvoy sets the tone for the series in its opening scene, with a monologue expounding on why “America is not the greatest country in the world.”
Despite Sorkin’s trademark witty dialogue, the show wasn’t universally embraced. A THR review noted “it was both really good and really bad, which was maddening on a level much more visceral than just despising something for being awful, ridiculous or inept.” One scene — in which several News Night staffers who are stuck on a plane, and thus unable to help break the news of Osama bin Laden’s killing on air, announce it to the pilot and fellow passengers, eliciting a round of congratulatory handshakes and hugs — highlights the series’ sometimes cringey self-importance (and has become a meme posted ironically when major news breaks).
In a 2014 THR Showrunner Roundtable, aware that critics preferred The West Wing to his new show, Sorkin compared his efforts to those of a “golfer who hacks his way around the golf course all day long, but then for some reason just hits a beautiful shot. That’s the reason they keep coming back.” It wasn’t all a slog for Newsroom, though: In its three seasons, the show nabbed six Emmy noms, including a lead actor win for Daniels in 2013.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.