Really? No thread about Newsroom starting tonight at 10? There is now.

[OliviaLMumsnet]

Dammit Olivia, a moment of excitement there when I thought you meant it was on proper TV. It's only on Sky fecking Atlantic isn't it so far?

Have been reading reviews of it and apparently the dialogue is very intense and all written in fluent Sorkinese. Looking forward to it!

Balls I forgot.

Just checked, it's repeated tomorrow night.
And I couldn't have watched it tonight anyhow, because DH is recording Friday Night Lights and Revenge at the same time.

Sometimes I think accidentally married a 14 year old girl.

It got awful reviews in the states.

Oh. :(

I have got NOTHING I'm watching in my sky planner at the moment. This is not good.

LOL at 14 y/o girl
thanks for repeat info
First thoughts.
I enjoyed it v much (but i have just been watching the killing 2 with Sarah Lund so it's nice to have something a bit less dark after that
yy to fluent sorkinese.
interesting that Sorkin likes his protagonists to smoke...
and that he casts the leads to look a bit like him...
Wasn't expecting it to be so long. loving the double bill first ep.!
Looking forward to next week.

Ah glad to hear youy liked it Olivia. That's my Friday night sorted! I shall report back:)

Have watched eps 1-3. I loved bits of it and hated others. Cannot get over my dislike of Emily Mortimer - the character and the actor. Never seen her in anything before, she just jarred. All that posturing, and no chemistry with Will.

And why does Maggie have to be so "mess up and run around and cry"? Works for 1 episode but no more.

Do like Will and do like the story. Some really good bits. Just found it a bit clunky.

I don't like it although Episode 3 was better than the first 2.

It's the same stories he told in Studio 60 and Sports Night. And told them better there.

Yes, the some of the dialogue is pure Sorkin. But so much of it was like being hit with a sledgehammer. BAM foreshadow. WHOOMP Another foreshadow.

Really?

And yes, Maggie is a wet blanket and Mac is annoying. Jeff Daniels needs more air time as does the young, male producer whose name I don't know who came with Mac.

I have hopes for it getting better.

Think he might be Jim, Tee, or it could have been Jack.

I've only watched the opening epi so far and liked it - it needs to bed in, I think, and for us to get closer to some of the characters, and to hear their back stories.

Maggie had better get less stupid pdq tho, as I don't think I'll be able to stick with her. Compare her with the interns in WW (the Laurens) and you can see the difference in calibre of character.....

The station chief guy, the top producer guy (Sam Waterstone) played a really good part I thought. Seemed all washed up and then you realise he orchestrated the whole thing....

Didn't see much of sports night or studio 60 so it's all new to me.

The real problem I'm having with it is Sorkin seemed to start in the middle. I don't know these characters yet, so why do I care about their relationships?

He should have started with the furore over the oil spill and built from there, IMHO.

I liked the way they used real news stories although there is a danger that reporting with hindsight could get preachy. Then again, Sorkin preaches better than most.

The Maggie/Don relationship annoys me as does her running around with dishevelled hair to show how fast-paced it is and how she messes up a lot.

Talking of hair I would happily take a hatchet pair of scissors to Emily M's fringe or side floppy bit. Then again I could happily take a hatchet to her. "MacKenzie McHale" indeed. What parent would lumber their daughter with a name that must inevitably lead to her being called "Double Mac"? And the v English accent being explained away as her being American but the daughter of the ambassador?

Plus the idea of her having having been embedded for how many months doesn't ring true. Plus her speech about Don Quixote was ludicrous.

Don't like her much

Do like Jim (though what he sees in Maggie...) and Will and the news division man and Neal the blogger.

Got very excited at the prospect of a new Sorkin fix and parts were spot on. Agree, not keen on Emily Mortimers character / portrayal, doesn't seem to work. Thought Will was good, Jim too - Don and Maggie were annoying but Charlie (Sam W) was good. Hoping it is a grower

Liked it more than I thought I would.

My problem with Sorkin things is that the dialogue is too clever by half. No one wants to watch people saying: 'Erm, you know, thingy...' but there's a middle ground between inarticulacy and speechifying.

Also I don't believe anyone would be able to reel off those figures about oil wells and frequency of inspections without referring to their notes. Especially someone as dopey as that Maggie.

I hate Emily Mortimer in everything. How does this person get work? She's a poor actress, totally unconvincing and her face is wonky.

Poor Emily Mortimer. Given absolutely classic American dialogue and meant to pull it off in an English accent. It takes Allison Janney to deliver this:

"Hey jughead, I ain't afraid of nothin', 'cept jellyfish which is completely normal"

You certainly can't do it with a posh British accent. They should have either changed the dialogue when they cast her or at least let her be doing an impersonation when she had to say it!

Don and Maggie are dronesomely dreadful. Like Oprah should come on and shout 'get some respect, girlfriend!' (and Oprah hasn't even done that for years).

And some of the Sorkin formulae are getting very tired. Ooh, the ex-girlfriend has to work with the hero (hello Mandy, hello Harriet - and I'm sure this happened in Sports Night too). Plus my least favourite Sorkinism of all time: having people repeat lines of dialogue. Say it really fast, then have someone say 'what?' and then repeat it. Sorkin should be banned from using this to fill up script pages.

So - yes. It was okay. Not enough Dev Patel, and I totally wanted Jane Fonda to storm through the door at the end with the television news equivalent of "I am the lord thy god".

Well I watched it. And I liked it. A little cheesy in some parts, but thats to be expected. And I let out a little squeal of delight to see Dev Patel in it.

Emily Mortimer gets my goat a little, but she was good in parts. It'll fill my summer drought anyway.

I loved it. I have nothing against Emily Mortimer, mind. It has awful reviews from the critics but is loved by the viewers (so far) I've missed Mr Sorkin very badly and was looking forward to it.
Clever people telly.

Just watched Episode 4.

It gets much much better as it goes along...

I watched it too, sitting on hands not to post anything. Agree, it does get better. I'm wavering between Will and Jim

Jim. ::gavel::

What an unrealistic, lazy, smuggity, smugfest. And I?m a bleeding heart liberal.

Well, EM stops acting so much with her head bobbing and arms flailing and when things are really serious, turning at 45° angles 8 times a second flailing and bobbing like a overwired robot. She acted mostly with her eyes, it was calmer. So that's an improvement. Maybe her arms were tired.

Maggie should be drowned. The relationship stuff is dire.

But Will is growing on me in a klutzy sort of way and JF could be a prize bitch and Jim, despite his attraction to MaggieTheDrip, is very easy on the eye.

Story and dialogue heaps of crap but it doesn't annoy me any more so I'll keep watching. It was quite fun in an awful sort of way. That's a sad indictment of Sorkin's work though.

I've an idea.

There was that terrible flood in Pakistan a couple of years ago. Maggie could be sent to report on that and drown. It would fit the timeline and tick the liberal foreign news agenda.

And they could work in a climate change angle.

EM could be sent to cover the royal wedding. Even ACN couldn't ignore that, loads of reporting on how ham sandwich vendors were exploited and the price of tea going up.

She'd be all indignant about the wedding as she's a proper war reporter (splutter) but luckily stays on to visit family and is caught up in the riots, which she insists on covering. Then she goes up in flames.

Afterwards Will could do a tribute show from London, England, and comment on British liberal things like the NHS.

In another of those really fast conversations while walking down the street, he could be distracted while passionately debating with that evil ratings chaser, who was Ted in Six Feet Under, having Bob Crow on his show as a guest.

Will would shout: 'Sod the ratings: it's what Mac would would have wanted!', look the wrong way and be hit by a double decker bus.

I vote for the number 8 because it passes the quintessentially English Fortnum and Mason.