I have sort of a love-hate relationship with Sorkin’s writing but I have to admit that this trailer is pretty impressive.
HBO has released a trailer for the new drama series The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes show about cable news. Sorkin has an uneven history in television, having created two well-regarded shows, one a hit (The West Wing) and one not (Sports Night), as well as one that had a great pilot and was genuinely terrible after that (Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip). He’s also written lots of movies: The American President, Malice (which is underappreciated and kind of great, by the way), A Few Good Men, The Social Network, and Moneyball. But it’s his history in TV that echoes most strongly through this preview, unsurprisingly enough.
It kills me that this is on HBO, which I don’t get and don’t want to pay $$ per month for even for Aaron Sorkin. Hopefully it won’t be too long before it’s available On Demand or something.
It’s good that I don’t track these things that closely because apparently news of this project began circulating back in 2009. That would have been torture.
I suppose I can either pick up HBO or wait for the video release.
I’m excited for it because Aaron Sorkin is my absolute idol.
I’m probably in the minority on that one (and I fully know it) but I’m especially excited to see how he will handle a more open forum (HBO) versus the primetime TV we are used to with him
Except for the part about the FCC, that’s what we all hoped for from Studio 60 and that didn’t turn out so well (although it had some pretty good moments).
I remember several years ago checking IMDB to see what Sorkin was up to after West Wing and it said “untitled Facebook movie” and I rolled my eyes, like how could that possibly be good? Just goes to show why I’m not a Hollywood writer.
My theory is that the “Facebook movie” was written on a dare. Next, just to prove his chops, he will tackle the invention of the liquid soap dispenser and somehow make that interesting.
As far as I can tell, journalists and critics got very confused with Studio 60 and focused on it being in competition with 30 Rock. Then dismissed it because clearly Studio 60 wasn’t as funny.
Which seems to me to be a case of mass idiocy. One of those was a drama about behind the scenes in a comedy show, the other one which was a comedy show (the real show in 30 Rock doesn’t really feature). It was like dismissing The West Wing because it wasn’t as funny as Spin City.
The show in itself, I really enjoyed for something people dismissed as ‘terrible’. It did get a bit mawkish towards the end with the kidnapped soldier plotline, but it is a show I remember fondly, and I’ve watched every 30 Rock episode too, and that didn’t ruin it for me.
And that was its doom. It’s easy to be weighty and dramatic when one of your characters is the President, but not so much when you spend a whole episode trying to do a live show for the East Coast, then trying to do it again, live, for the West Coast, all because… I forget why it was important. It was literally impossible for me to care.
I think Studio 60 got into the situation that the critics ‘Smelled blood’ and people stopped watching because of that. I still know people who’ve discovered it outside of the context of what the critics said (like I did with Sports Night), and loved it. To dismiss it as a horrible seems quite unfair when it was a reasonably well written and entertaining series about a subject which in the end some people didn’t seem to want to watch about… Sometimes because they’ve been told they don’t want to watch it.
I liked them both. If anything, I find the West Wing the weakest of the three, working my way through them at the moment. I know thats probably all half context about Clinton, but the MS thing doesn’t half drag at times. Not even reached the weaker seasons yet (halfway through season 3 at the moment). I’m guessing some people will object to that comment, but I have an out, I’m British.
I think one of the weaknesses of Studio 60, besides the lack of gravitas that working on a comedy sketch show inherently has, was the over emphasis on the two romantic relationships among the lead cast members. I would have liked more show drama and less “will they or won’t they” drama. Not only that, but both relationships - Matt Perry/Sarah Paulson and Amanda Peet/Bradley Whitford - were boss/underling situations and I could never get past how unprofessional that is. West Wing had plenty of good drama without falling back on sexual tension much.*
*Josh/Donna, of course, but that was very much underplayed until the final season.
I think Sorokin does an excellent job of showing people at the top of their game, doing their jobs well. He’s exceptionally good when their personal lives creep in around the fringes of the job, but the focus is still the job. He’s awful when the focus is on their personal lives (or other things that aren’t work related).
Sports Night worked when it was about a bunch of people putting together a nightly cable sports show. It didn’t when it was about the “dating plan.” The West Wing very nearly always had the job to focus on, so it was harder to see some of the weaknesses. Then there was Studio 60… there were some good moments in there - IMHO, those were all about people trying to put on a late night show. It failed whenever he stopped talking about “we’re putting on a show” and instead talked about politics (people who don’t work in politics don’t talk about politics at work. It was weird) or decided to work out his issues with christians (again, people who don’t work in religion don’t talk religion at work) or did anything “romantic” (how he treats women in his scripts is another post/rant). He lost interest in writing about what happened backstage in that world (there were two entire episodes that focused around military hostage negotiations. There shouldn’t have been episodes about hostages in Studio 60.) and tried to have discussions about other things and it ended up being awful TV.
I still won’t order HBO for this - but I think it has a better chance of allowing him to stay focused on what the show should focus on and go off on his rant of the day at the same time.
Every time they did that I was instantly reminded of that Star Trek TNG episode where Data learns comedy from Joe Piscopo. If that isn’t a bad sign then nothing is.