HBO picks up Aaron Sorkin's new series

[TheOppressionRepressesMe]

OMG this looks so awful. Except Emily Mortimer MAYBE

[jeanne_dielman]

So apparently, as part of cable news research, Sorkin shadowed Keith Olbermann.

This all makes sense.

[Howard Beale's Toothpaste]

Haha, that DOES make sense. Ugh, I bet Sorkin sees Olbermann as some sort of liberal hero (when he's just another pompous blowhard, albeit with less aggressively evil opinions than people like Beck and O'Reilly).

[Ceilidh-ann]

I hope Sorkin completes his Olbermann based drama trilogy by doing a film or TV show based on the ongoing lawsuit mess with Current TV and Al Gore. It'd be glorious. *enjoying watching Olbermann squirm in humiliation a bit too much*

[psyco]

I read an article that Paul Schneider is part of the cast too:
"Schneider describes the series as “‘The West Wing’ on CNN,” and admitted the project’s pedigree was too good to pass up."

[looptaloop]

"Schneider describes the series as “‘The West Wing’ on CNN,”

Captain Obvious much? It's Sorkin.

It's Sports Night on CNN. It's Studio 60 on CNN.

[Howard Beale's Toothpaste]

I read an article that Paul Schneider is part of the cast too:
"Schneider describes the series as “‘The West Wing’ on CNN,” and admitted the project’s pedigree was too good to pass up."

Schneider's a great actor.

[Jonathan]

New trailer:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgFZbrwmndA"]The Newsroom Season 1 Trailer #2 - YouTube[/ame]

Still has the same issues as the first trailer, though I like this a little more, mostly for a little more variety of Jeff Daniels. Though the relationship stuff looks kinda awful already.

[jeanne_dielman]

Well, at least, the reviews are entertaining.

Maureen Ryan's one at HuffPo is particularly funny.

"The Newsroom" doesn't work in part because it's never content to make a point: It feels the need to hit the audience over the head with each point, gild the point, outline it in neon and then underline it fifty times with a thick Sharpie.

The funniest thing about "The Newsroom" is that it takes as a given that people care a great deal about what one news anchor says on his show; despite writing that Facebook movie, Sorkin still doesn't get that people sample the news all day through any number of sources and that news anchors and their shows, frankly, don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

Here's another whopping irony, this one on a more personal scale: Theoretically, I'm in the center of the choir that Sorkin is preaching to. I got my Masters in journalism from Northwestern's Medill School 19 years ago; I worked for 13 years in the newsroom of a big, urban newspaper and thus, have been on the front lines of the media industry's evolution; and I am impressed every year by the winners of the Peabody Awards, an organization on whose board I have the honor of sitting (I'm not trying to be obnoxious here -- I only mention Northwestern and the Peabodys because Sorkin's characters drop these names regularly).

Yet what am I to do with the characters on this show, who make these kinds of statements: "We don't do 'good television,' we do the news!" "That studio is a courtroom and we only call expert witnesses!" "Abolishing the minimum wage would create jobs. You know what else would? Slavery!"

[flibber]

Yeah, these reviews are amazing. Emily Nussbaum eviscerates it. Alan Sepinwall and Dan Fienberg review it on their podcast for twenty minutes and seem to grow more and more horrified as they talk about it. I can't wait to make fun of this show on the Internet.