Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Anna Torv, Sam Reid, Robert Taylor, William McInnes, Marg Downey, Stephen Peacocks, Michella Lim Davidson, Chum Ehelepola, Rory Fleck Byrne, Daniel Gillies, Philippa Northeast, Chai Hansen, Caroline Lees, Maria Angelico, John Leary, Jackson Tozer, Rhys Mitchell, Dan Spielman, Hunter Page-Lochard.
If everything in life is a political act, then we are in effect the news. We may be a bystander on the scene, but in effect our presence makes us a leading player in observance, and how re react to the narrative is how we are judged by those who sift through the pictures and present their evidence to the awaiting world via The Newsreader who is the most constant face on our television screens.
We all have that one reassuring presence in our lives, that one person we want to have break the news to us, regardless of whether it is good, exciting, monumental, or that which our distress at the sights and showreels, the close introspection of the disaster that has taken lives, is made definitive by the newsreader on screen to whom we trust not to lie to us.
The news though can be a lie itself; it can be edited as much as those anecdotes that we revel in that make us appear the hero or the victim, never just truly the observer, and it is to that which makes the second series of the Australian drama, The Newsreader, such a compelling moment of television in which to be immersed into.
The past is another country, but in television terms it might as well be the village just down the road, the one that mirrors our current perceptions of how we still regard truth as being infallible, a watertight and unfailing entity as long as it is delivered with a sincere tone and without a hint of malicious intent placed within it.
The Newsreader may appear to be slick and in the same vein as that which dominated the screens in the 80s in which it is set, but there is a wonderful sense of owning the deceit that it chases down.
This is shown on the passion of the acting, Anna Torv, no stranger to being part of excellent character driven series, Sam Reid who has become a television hot ticket in his role as the vampire Lestat in big budget Interview With A Vampire, and William McInnes who simply chews every piece of the set in his role as head of the station, Lindsay Cunningham, bring together a team so dedicated to portraying the dominance of the news as the access to the moment it emerges is now prevalent in today’s society.
We are the news, each one of us; we are a heartbeat away from being the two-minute feature, or the weeklong expose, and it is only how the editorial team view you that stops you from being the main event when another newsflash is announced.
Everything is a political act, and it all ends up in the hands of The Newsreader as they look down the lens directly into your soul. Superb television from start to finish.
Ian D. Hall