THE TV COLUMN

New Sorkin HBO series looks to be newsworthy

— Nothing gets the TV buzz going like a new project from writer/producer Aaron Sorkin.

The passionate Sorkin worked his magic on The West Wing and Sports Night, and he has done it again with HBO’s new drama, The Newsroom.

We’ll overlook the faux pas that was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Maybe that’s why it has been five years since Sorkin has been on the small screen.

The series, starring Jeff Daniels as a cable news anchor, debuts at 9 p.m. today. There will be 10 episodes in the first season.

Sorkin’s at his idealistic best when he has a character venting his spleen. Daniels portrays Will McAvoy, a staid and somewhat cynical anchor for News Night, a cable news program on (fictional) ACN. The cable network may be fictional, but the stories that the series reports on are real.

A moderate Republican, McAvoy has been content for years to walk the middle of the road avoiding controversy.

Then one day during an otherwise mundane college panel presentation, McAvoy’s eyes glaze over and he has a crisis of conscience and a stunning epiphany that leads to a delightful Sorkinian tirade of condemnation and righteousness.

It’s juicy stuff watching McAvoy being reborn into a hard news crusader. And then he’s forced to go on vacation. Network honchos saw McAvoy’s episode as a meltdown.

When he returns, McAvoy discovers most of his staff has fled to other shows and he’s forced to work with new team members. The stage is set for nifty drama as McAvoy pounces with the hard questions while trying to deal with some unsettling changes in his personal life.

Head of the ACN news division is Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston), an old-school newsman unhappy with the way the news has lost direction and integrity.

It’s Skinner who arranges for the return of executive producer MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), the one person capable of restoring McAvoy’s passion. McHale was also once romantically involved with McAvoy.

The drama follows the news team “on their mission to reclaim the legacy of Murrow and Cronkite in the face of a fickle audience, corporate mandates and tangled personal relationships.”

The characters are instantly fascinating and the dialogue is vintage Sorkin.

“Somewhere along the way,” Sorkin told HBO, “journalists went from heroic to derided and I wanted to write about a group of journalists who are doing their best to do the news well.”

Sorkin sees the series as a mixture of “Don Quixote, a workplace family, romantic comedy, being young and alone in the city, forgiveness, the trivialization of the news and a team of people who want to do their jobs well.”

If you think you recognize real news people in Sorkin’s drama, you’d be wrong.

“None of the characters in the show are based on anyone from real life,” he said. “Not even a little bit.”

Sorkin did, however, do copious research in newsrooms ranging from Fox and CNN to MSNBC. It shows on camera.

His hopes for the audience?

“I wouldn’t mind at all if people disagreed about what they just saw. I hope what people take away is that they like these characters and this place and this story, and that they want to come back to see where this is all going.” COMING SOON

I keep getting e-mail from readers wanting to know when the really, really good stuff is coming on. Here’s a handy reminder about three programs.

July 15: Breaking Bad. It’s the beginning of the end for Walter White in AMC’s award-winning drama. There will be eight episodes in this summer’s first part of the split final season. The series will conclude next year.

Meanwhile, on the same date over on USA, Political Animals kicks off its six-episode miniseries run. Sigourney Weaver plays a former first lady with a philandering husband. She made her own run at the presidency but now finds herself as secretary of state.

Art imitating life? We’ll see.

Aug 12: Hell on Wheels. AMC’s railroad epic Western returns to the 1860s. I found the series to be uneven last season - so uneven that I quit watching. I’ll give it another chance to redeem itself. It has two episodes to win me back or I’m taking my business elsewhere.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail: [email protected]

Style, Pages 46 on 06/24/2012

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