I really, really enjoyed The West Wing by Aaron Sorkin. The fast-paced (positive, idealogical) dialogue together with the legendary “walk-with-me” one-shot scenes were simply fantastic to behold.
When I heard Sorkin was back with another show — this time based around a news room — I thought, “Brilliant”.
I’ve been scouring the internet for trailers and snippets in the run up to the airing of the first episode of The Newsroom here in the UK. When I was in the States, I turned to HBO and found it showing wall-to-wall trailers and background videos one evening. I devoured each one. Genius.
I couldn’t wait.
Then I watched it live on Tuesday.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Indeed I think I’ll need to go back and watch it again, just to make sure I get all the references. The dialogue really is fast-paced.
There was a brief moment when some of the staffers were (rather randomly) screaming and shouting at each other when I thought, “Errr, what is this? What am I seeing?” but I was patient. For just a moment the image shattered. But it healed itself swiftly and I have to say, the buzz of watching the team deliver a live show around a breaking issue (that we, the audience, all knew about) — well, that was great. I even took a deep breath when the team went off air. Heh.
If you haven’t checked it out, then I think you should — especially if you enjoyed The West Wing.
Here in the UK it looks to be airing every Tuesday at 10pm on Sky Atlantic.
And now, here’s the trailer from HBO: