The Newsreader S1-S3

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Heavily promoted as a landmark Aussie series and (amazingly) well-reviewed by critics, The Newsreader proves to be as dispiriting and preposterous as almost every other ABC drama of recent years. In order to fashion a story about how appallingly mistreated women working in 1980s TV newsrooms were - something that may or may not be true - The Newsreader finds it necessary to create an entirely false and revisionist picture of TV news of the time. For example, up-and-coming newsreader Helen Norville (played by Anna Torv) is threatening the popularity and career of older, established male newsreader Geoff Walters, a seasoned journo who we're told made his name covering Vietnam. The inference is that "glamour" and Helen's brand of more "emotional" news coverage is replacing a more staid kind of impartial journalism. In reality, the older established male newsreaders of the 80s were not crusty old journos like Geoff; they were almost unanimously "broadcasters" or "announcers" like the esteemed Brian Henderson. They were almost never journalists; they were there to project the right aura of authority and deliver the news in well-modulated voices. What actually happened through the 80s is that female newsreaders (generally with minimal experience, sometimes journalists, sometimes not) were grafted on to these men to inject glamour and a sense of gender balance. They occasionally continued to work as reporters, but mostly they didn't. The idea that any of them had enormous clout - and, as Helen does, could dictate that news coverage be extended instantly or demand to be given additional on-air bulletins - is just ludicrous. In short, The Newsreader makes the 80s an era in which women had to fight to survive, when in fact the 80s was the era in which women were promoted to news desks and as on-air journalists in ever greater numbers. If anyone was fighting to keep their jobs, it was the men they were replacing. It doesn't help that in Torv's hands Helen Norville is a truly lousy newsreader who wouldn't keep her job on a weekend rural news bulletin. That this somehow escapes the notice of the series' producers and directors isn't surprising given the general cluelessness of the entire enterprise. In short, The Newsreader is yet another example of "woke" drama that plays fast and loose with history and reality, which seems to be the specialty of ABC dramas of late. Total Control was similarly daft. It's looking a lot like the era of the ABC as the last bastion of quality Australian drama might pretty much be over.

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