Reviews – Page 44 – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

True Blood: Season 5, Episode 8–Somebody That I Used to Know

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 8 YET.

“Praise Lilith! Praise Jesus! Praise Moses’ cock, I am born again!”

It was another ladle of torrid supernatural stew in the overseasoned mix of this week’s True Blood, still frantically juggling its excess of plots with surprising aplomb. The coup within the vampire Authority was less prevalent this week (although still hanging heavy over the show) and with good reason – this episode is the first to be directed by Stephen Moyer himself. Consequently, it was fairly light on the presence of Bill Compton; but when he did show up, it was for Very Important Plot Points.

After his vision of Godric last week, Eric was the first to sober up from the heady brew of Lilith-blood, recognising that he was high as a kite, and he managed to talk Bill down too – or so it seemed. Salome’s plainly eager to get back to the old ways as soon as possible, and had Steve Newlin go out and round up some unwilling human victims. But when she offered a pleading young mother to Bill for for lunch, he was less than keen. His avowal that he would not deprive a human child of its parent was obviously rooted in his own experience, but in case we missed that, we got an interesting flashback to him visiting his daughter’s deathbed in 1910.

But did the memory of his daughter’s unsuccessful pleas to be turned change his mind? It didn’t seem so at first, but the script sprung a surprise on us (and Eric) at the very end, as Bill was the one to propose the cleverest solution to converting mainstreaming vampires – destroy the source of Tru Blood itself, forcing them to feed on humans or starve. It’s an audacious plan that would likely work, hence our surprise at Bill after his generally humanitarian views up till now. Is he faking it? If so, he’s taking Eric in too – and he’s given the Sangunistas a genuinely good strategy that they hadn’t thought of themselves. It’s a measure of how successful the show is at balancing its vampires between sympathetic and genuinely threatening that I’m still wondering.

So once again, it seems that Eric Northman could be humanity’s only hope. Still, even I could tell that his attempt to reason with Nora on behalf of the spectral Godric was hardly likely to work. Religious fanatics tend to be deaf to actual reason, particularly when it conflicts with their deeply held beliefs, and so Nora proved, declaring the repentant Godric in his final days a “perversion”. The apparent tears in Alexander Skarsgard’s eyes were a nice touch – but then again, I thought vampires only cried blood?

The vampire storyline was mostly on hold this week, mainly dealt with at the beginning and end of the episode. Even Russell was comparatively subdued (well, as subdued as Denis O’Hare can be giving that performance). He seems to have taken up with the newly vamp/gay/comic relief Steve Newlin, which is fun, though I can’t see it ending well for either of them!

With the vamps in the background, we got a lot more concentration on some other plots that had been growing in importance. The hate group/lynch mob that Hoyt had fallen in with got a lot of mileage this week, as, predictably, they’d kidnapped Jessica as a little treat for him, the intent that he could kill her himself. Again, the script toyed with our expectations – surely Hoyt’s bitterness is only surface deep, and he wouldn’t kill his ex in cold blood (so to speak)? Actually I had some genuine doubts about that, particularly now we know that the otherwise sympathetic Terry Bellefleur is actually a war criminal.

But no, Hoyt couldn’t kill Jessica, even if he couldn’t forgive her either. One of the key themes this week was that of former friends/lovers/siblings finding themselves irrevocably separated by life changes, and here that was underlined by a quite sad little conversation between Hoyt and Jessica about how they’d drifted apart. It neatly echoed Eric and Nora’s argument, too.

Sam and Sheriff Andy were closing in on the hate mob from another direction, as Sam intimidated their unrepentant and uncooperative captive with the neat trick of turning into a cobra. But Sam was in for a shock of his own, as the hospitalised Luna, under heavy stress, had shifted into the shape of none other than – Sam Merlotte! Cue, the increasingly sour disbelief of the Sheriff – “I hate this goddamn town”. No wonder his predecessor retired.

We know from last year how dangerous it can be for a shape shifter to imitate another actual person, but the seriousness was mixed with humour here. Sam Trammell’s idea of playing a woman playing Sam Merlotte wasn’t particularly subtle, but his slightly camp femininity was certainly good for a laugh. As was his mopping Luna/Sam’s fevered brow while admitting, “you’re very handsome”. Sweetly, it was his kiss that brought her back to herself; but I wonder whether more will be made of this incident or if it will simply be one more thing to come back to in later years?

It looks like Lafayette’s brujo problem may be over – certainly he’s got away from Don Bartolo, with the murderous assistance of his angry wife. This left Jesus free to spectrally appear in Lafayette’s car (now an elderly Volvo Amazon – I wonder what happened to the Mercedes?). It was a nice directorial touch from Moyer to keep Jesus slightly out of focus in every shot, emphasising his nebulous reality.

But Lafayette still has problems, as Arlene and Holly have roped him in to help with Terry’s problems in his capacity as a medium. Fed up, he’s started charging for these services – well, so would I. But it’s another hair-raising seance (except for Lafayette, who doesn’t have any hair) as the murdered Iraqi woman Zafira makes an appearance, and boy, is she pissed. Turns out she will lift the curse – providing Terry kills Patrick. Or vice versa. Either way, one’s got to kill the other. Cue Patrick doing a runner – but I wonder if the show will have the balls to make Terry go through with this. Certainly won’t help with his PTSD, that’s for sure…

The Shreveport werewolves popped up to finally have that duel between buff, heroic Alcide and disreputable, V-addicted JD. After a particularly raunchy sex scene between Alcide and his hot young female trainer (which had me straining at the screen trying to see the details of Joe Manganiello’s brief, out-of-focus full frontal), the challenge was on. With the added spice of having to hunt a terrified college runner to the death. Alcide being the heroic type, he dropped out rather than try that, but fought JD anyway. He was about to have his head stove in when Martha turned up to give JD a damn good bollocking. I guess if the mythos is following genuine wolf behaviour, only a male can be pack leader. And yet Martha is so obviously the best candidate that perhaps we’re about to see a werewolf feminist revolution.

Tara was having problems with asshole customers, as a racist high school acquaintance popped up in Fangtasia to insult her all over again, under the impression that customer service rules would prevent Tara from returning fire. For a while it looked that way, especially when Pam turned up to give her a scolding and offer the spoiled prom queen a drink on the house. I was particularly sympathetic, speaking as a former store clerk who never got backing from the management when it came to dealing with awkward customers. So it was a very pleasant surprise that Pam had captured the former prom queen to be Tara’s plaything and lunch. I guess Pam would be a pretty cool boss after all, though you wouldn’t cross her – “You don’t know me that well. My mad face and my happy face are the same.”

Sookie, persuaded by an unusually eloquent Jason not to blast away all her magic, was experimenting with new fairy powers (with a little help from the local fey gang). Turns out she can project herself into the past and inhabit her mother’s experiences, to try and solve her parents’ murder. Instead, much to Claude’s surprise, she managed to project herself into the vampire that killed them. He was wearing another of the show’s convenient hats to hide his identity, and I’d assumed that it would turn out to be either Bill, or, more likely, Eric. That would be the interesting, if a bit predictable, thing to do.

But no, turns out the attacker’s name is ‘Warlow’ – at least according to Claudine, who was seen blasting him with fairy magic in the past. Sookie’s new power has aftereffects though, as a spectral ‘Warlow’ materialised out of thin air to growl threats at her. Still couldn’t make out his face though, and I’m convinced that the name is fake and it’ll be a vampire we’ve seen before. Maybe not Bill or Eric, but if it’s someone previously unknown, that would be as much of a cheat as the solution to most Agatha Christie mysteries.

It was another fun episode, charged with the usual heady mix of violence, action and supernatural sexiness. Stephen Moyer did a perfectly good, and occasionally inspired job of directing, and I’m surprised he hasn’t tried it before; though I guess being one of the leads of the show is quite a heavy workload in itself! I know no other cast members are trying it, at least this year. With all these plots being given virtually equal weight this season, I doubt any of them would have the time.

Bert and Dickie: Oars of Glory

With the much-anticipated (and expensive) opening extravaganza due tomorrow, Olympic fever is truly in full swing. A couple of weeks ago, I was stuck in a jubilant crowd as the Olympic Torch passed through Cambridge, looking slightly insignificant after the corporate outriders of giant buses publicising Lloyds, Coca-Cola and Samsung. Now, it seems that every other show on the BBC is Olympics-related. The sitcom Twenty Twelve has been running for two series (and will presumably now have to end), documentaries about British Olympians like diving pinup Tom Daley ooze from our screens, and Ab Fab returned with an Olympic special that I haven’t seen yet, but was less than favourably received. Even the News is currently being broadcast from a studio overlooking the stadium.

It’s reached the feverish point where even the gentlest of criticism of this massively expensive, corporately-controlled sporting event is seen as unpatriotic, and anyone who says they won’t be watching is either a liar or a traitor to their country. Well, I don’t much care for sport (or corporate tax avoidance) and I’m an old curmudgeon. But I will, I suppose, be watching the diving, if only to lust after Tom Daley.

With all this going on, it was a relief to step back to the more innocent 1948 Olympics for the BBC’s heartwarming if formulaic sport drama Bert and Dickie. Centring on the British rowing duo who won gold at a time of national austerity, it was a story that felt tailor made for dramatisation, because it had so many real elements that might so easily be dismissed as heartstring tugging cliche if they weren’t actually true. Well, true-ish; the film did have a little disclaimer at the beginning saying that “some scenes and dialogue have been invented”, which might explain some of the more mawkish moments.

Still, the facts themselves would have seemed sprung from the mind of a less than imaginative screenwriter were it not for being actually true. Bert Bushnell and Dickie Burnell (true life drama often has to deal with awkwardly similar names) were chalk and cheese rowers from wildly different backgrounds. Dickie wrote for The Times, came from a very wealthy family and drove a gorgeous Mk IV Jaguar. Bert’s family were lower middle class, his father with a boat building business, and while the family owned a car, Bert himself had to get about on a bike. Dickie was a member of all the right clubs, while Bert was just an oik who couldn’t get past the doorman.

Pushed together by rowing coach (and former gold medallist) Jack Beresford, this mismatched pair had to learn to work together to beat the rest of the world to Olympic gold. That they would was never really in doubt even if you didn’t know the story; the BBC would hardly make a ‘feelbad’ drama in the runup to the Olympics in which the British team lost. To add to the reality that seems like cliche, both men had domineering fathers who were former rowers themselves, and Bert had a sweetheart whose distractions caused his pushy dad some concern, leading him to banish her back to her distant home of Dumfries.

What followed was more or less the standard stuff of sporting drama, but with the validity of truth. Bert had class-based fights with ’gentleman’ Dickie, while Dickie berated Bert for the chip on his shoulder. Both men suffered crises of confidence as they advanced through the rounds, finding solace in each other’s fathers’ advice. Along the way, Bert overheard his father telling Dickie of his own, thwarted Olympic dreams as a younger rower. Dickie’s father revealed to Bert that he himself won a gold in 1908, and if his son was successful they would be the first father and son ever to win Olympic gold in rowing. Contrived? No, again, this is absolutely true; Charles and Richard Burnell are still the only father and son to have achieved this.

The rowing was handled very well by the director, with the actors visibly doing it for real in most shots. I don’t know much about rowing, but the script didn’t talk down to the audience and we were left to work it out as best we could from the plot and dialogue. Which worked surprisingly well. I now know the difference between a rower (one oar) and a sculler (two oars), and while I could make little of the byzantine rules governing passing through to the next stage of the tournament, it was clear enough that winning would send you through. The alternative was tried, of intentionally losing to rig who our heroes would face in the next round, only for it to blow up in their faces when the expected winners of the stage also lost and would face them anyway.

Other tactical rowing strategies were tried, but it was really all about the build up to the Big Match That Would Decide It All – the Men’s Double Sculls final on August 9, 1948. This went as expected; the build up of tension as our heroes adjusted their boat, as Bert’s dad watched from the stands and his fiance watched on a tiny TV in a shop in faraway Dumfries, TVs still being mostly the province of the very rich.

They were off! And then, as expected, they pulled ahead, and everything went slow motion as swelling, inspirational music soared on the soundtrack (a convention of every sporting drama ever – think of Rocky and Chariots of Fire). Bert’s dad had left him an inspirational note: “make the boat sing”. And sing it did, as the race was intercut with Bert’s nervous mother, unable to watch, listening to Puccini on her gramophone.

Formulaic it may have been, but it was done well enough to still be tense and rather entertaining. Screenwriter William Ivory had delivered a script rich in sucrose but still occasionally barbed about class and standing to be insightful. And the cast, of course were excellent. Matt Smith was as impassioned as usual as Bert, but this was a distinctly different performance to that as the Doctor; it’s worth noting that Smith aspired to a sport career himself earlier in life, which felt like it informed his performance here. Between this and his decadent turn as Christopher Isherwood recently, I’m glad to see that he can still find a variety of roles while working on the punishing grind of Doctor Who. Mind you, when he put on the little white hat his mother had made for him, along with his round black-framed glasses, I couldn’t help being reminded of something:

Sam Hoare was similarly good as Dickie, while Douglas Hodge put in a nuanced performance as Bert’s dad. But for me the best thing was the still-amazing Geoffrey Palmer as Burnell Sr, an incredible performance that was all British restraint while hinting at the passion beneath that only broke through for a moment when his son won the gold.

In order to provide a context relating to today’s Olympics, the drama also contained numerous cutaways to the offices of then Prime Minister Clement Attlee, a role Clive Merrison was surely born to play. These were, technically, a little extraneous, as Attlee and his ministers (including a young Harold Wilson) had no actual contact with the people the rest of the drama was about. But they served to remind us that an Olympics had been pulled off at a time of even worse national austerity, when food was still being rationed and half of London lay in bomb-smashed ruins. This served to let the writer make some barbed points relating to the criticism of today’s Olympics; ruminating on the surprisingly successful advertising and sponsorship, one minister commented, “that could catch on.” And while corporations had provided sponsored Y-fronts, athletes still had to supply their own shorts!

The BBC had obviously thrown a fair bit of budget at it, so the production was rich in lavish period detail, mostly accurate. Even so, I’m not sure the word ‘knackered’ would have been used so freely in gentleman’s conversation in 1948; and while there were some gorgeous cars on display, it was noticeable that they all looked brand new. Surely even in the traffic-thin streets of 1948, there still would have been a few relics of ten year old bangers, or ex-military vehicles from the war that had only ended three years earlier? Plus, the valve radio in the Bushnells’ car warmed up amazingly quickly when switched on – in less than a second, in fact!

Well, that’s just quibbling really. The rest of the details were good – the brylcreem, the bakelite television, the snobby gentleman’s clubs, the giant BBC Outside Broadcast cameras. It was an unashamedly stirring, patriotic bit of sporting drama that even an Olympic sceptic like me could enjoy, with some good direction and fine performances all round. Lucky really, as it may well be the only Olympic-related TV I watch that isn’t the diving contests…

The Newsroom: Season 1, Episode 5 – Amen

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 5 YET.

“I’m just a middle aged man who never lived up to his potential. You don’t want to be on the wrong end of me if I ever do.”

After last week’s character heavy episode, it should perhaps have been a relief to find the focus of this week’s The Newsroom more thoroughly on actual news. And yet, Mr Sorkin’s skill with characters means that I’ve come to enjoy the ‘soap opera’ aspects of the show too. This week, the show managed to balance that with its critique of news and politics, together with its ongoing narrative, just about right. For this viewer at least, it lurched a little too far into Sorkin’s frequent mawkish sentimentality at its climax, but the rest was strong enough for me to forgive it that.

The big news topics covered this week were as important as ever (Will McAvoy might be aware of Justin Bieber, but you’ll never see him treated as news) – the emergent Arab Spring and the aftermath of President Mubarak’s resignation in Egypt, along with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s undemocratic public sector union-busting bill with the spurious justification of balancing the state budget. As we now know, neither of these stories ended well, at least if you’re of the political leaning shared by Sorkin and myself. The Egyptian people managed to topple a dictator and end up with a military junta that dissolved an uncooperative Parliament, while an attempt to recall Governor Walker recently met with defeat. As usual, the slightly unfair advantage of ACN news in being written from a year into the future allowed the show to cast a few notes of caution on both stories.

Along the way, the script, as cleverly constructed as usual, allowed for musings on journalistic integrity and courage, particularly when it comes to journalists putting themselves in harm’s way to report the facts. Will’s former colleague Elliot was reporting from Cairo, but stuck in his hotel room and unable to see the hell breaking loose in Tahrir Square below, much to Don’s frustration. After generally behaving like an asshole in the control room (his signature move), Don disappeared only to re-emerge later with the news that Elliot had after all ventured outside and got himself seriously beaten as a result.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that this must have been on Don’s instructions – as Will pointed out when Don finally confessed, everybody had known already. But it allowed Don to once again make amends for behaving like an asshole by overcompensating with acts of contrition throughout. I may have been wrong in my earlier assessments of Don as a one-dimensional asshole; at least he’s learning. And to be fair, his flaws here probably make him a more realistic character than half the staff – who hasn’t screwed something up at work and then tried to justify it afterwards?

The difference here being that screwing up can get people killed, an echo of similar storylines in The West Wing about shouldering responsibility for sending people into danger. As a former war correspondent, Mackenzie presumably knows all about that, but it was Neal’s turn to learn the lesson when he made contact with an underground Egyptian blogger and suggested they use him as a correspondent in the injured Elliot’s place.

After being reduced to stereotypical nerd comic relief with last week’s Bigfoot obsession, this week saw Neal restored as one of my favourite characters by giving him some truly meaty dialogue and storylines. We learned some of his news background as an amateur cameraman caught up in the 2005 London bombings, giving Dev Patel the chance to expertly deliver some well-crafted dialogue that truly captured the horror of that situation. It also gave him every reason to draw parallels between himself and the Egyptian blogger calling himself ‘Amen’ – as Neal pointed out, not the Christian blessing, but an Egyptian word meaning ‘hidden one’ (deriving from the god Amun, the ‘hidden’ form of Amun-Ra).

But Neal’s experiences in London hadn’t been in the context of a state in anarchy, and he soon came to realise the danger ‘Amen’ was putting himself in – especially when Mackenzie apologetically insisted that, for his reports to have validity, he’d have to reveal his real name and his face. So off came the bandanna to reveal a handsome young guy called Kahlid Salim (Amin El Gamal), and from then on it was pretty predictable that he was going to find himself in some danger – if not actually killed.

Predictable it may have been, but it was well played when Kahlid inevitably disappeared after being sent to military HQ chasing a story. Dev Patel was so good at showing Neal’s anguish that I just wanted to give him a hug. And his mounting anger at a clip of right wing pundit/moron Rush Limbaugh making light of the situation led him to punch the monitor with Rush’s visage so hard that he broke two fingers, adding him to the ever-growing list of injured ACN staff.

This was a peculiar little running plot point, perhaps meant to (hamfistedly) indicate that being in the studio can be just as dangerous as being in the field. Since this is plainly not true, I can only hope it wasn’t the intent, but that was how it came across. Still, it did allow for some blackly comic moments as a mounting number of ACN staff found themselves bandaged, splinted or in slings (or some combination of all of these). It started with Maggie tripping up (a slapstick character trait I’d hoped we’d left behind), and bashing Jim on the head with a door, which later required stitches. Elliot returned from the field looking pretty battered, and Don managed to sprain his shoulder trying unwisely to break into Reese Lansing’s office (in another attempt to assuage his guilt by trying to secure ransom money for Kahlid). By the end of the episode, the newsroom was starting to resemble a hospital emergency room, there were so many bandages and slings in evidence.

While all this was unfolding, Will and co were doing some digging into Gov Walker’s reasons for trying to shut down public sector unions in Wisconsin, coming up with an interesting conspiracy theory I hadn’t come across before. Will noted the involvement of conservative lobby group Citizens United in the Walker campaign, along with some carefully circumspect speculation about the alleged funding for the organisation from the billionaire Koch brothers (yep, them again).

He followed that up with some more carefully circumspect theorising about the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United’s favour, which for the purposes of free speech gave corporations the same rights to fund political campaigns as individuals. It has been alleged that Supreme Court justices Thomas and Scalia had a conflict of interest in ruling on the case, particularly Thomas, whose wife Virginia’s own political group was apparently in receipt of significant donations from the Tea Party, and by implication the Kochs. Having secured a judgement that would allow corporations the same freedoms as individuals, the only thorn in the corporate side was the fact that it gave the same freedoms to unions. Unions like those Walker was trying to drive into the ground, for reasons that now seemed obvious.

This had no real bearing on the story per se (and the Walker story wasn’t given as much prominence as the Egypt one anyway). But it was an interesting collection of information to have, whether or not you accept the conspiracy theory (and I’m inclined to). Yes, it was Aaron Sorkin once again using the show as a political platform, but it still worked as drama, I thought, in much the same way as similar scenes of speculation in Oliver Stone’s JFK.

This was some heavy stuff, but the tangled love lives of the characters at least provided some light relief. Maggie is still, bizarrely, trying to salvage her relationship with Don, shooting herself in the foot by trying to set up the much nicer Jim with her roommate Lisa instead. This week, this manifested itself in a somewhat contrived plot of Maggie determinedly trying to set up a date between Jim and Lisa so Lisa wouldn’t spoil her own night with Don. Inevitably, in sitcom style, it didn’t work out because Jim was so busy working he forgot to meet Lisa. But not to worry, the storyline can be strung out further yet, because Lisa’s initial fury soon melted with her confession that she was wearing edible underwear. Perhaps I’m beginning to see some reason behind those criticisms of Sorkin’s female characters…

Mackenzie wasn’t helping much there either, as it turned out her boyfriend, who she’d had on the show repeatedly as a guest, was running for Congress, leading to inevitable speculation as to her political bias and corruption. This fed into the running plotline of ACN’s attempts to discredit News Night and Will by using their own, vicious, gossip columnists. Charlie stepped in with a voice like thunder in the earpiece of a smarmy daytime show presenter when he repeated these allegations on air, but the damage was done – so badly, in fact, that Will was considering the option of actually paying the columnist in question to buy her off the story.

This led to another of those scenes in which Will confronts hypocrisy with the cheerable but improbable eloquence of a signature Sorkin character. On the point of paying the woman, he balked when she referred to herself as a journalist, going on a long rant about how real journalists (ie his staff) were honest and altruistic (possibly not true of all journalists in reality).

It was another wish-fulfilling moment, common on Sorkin shows, of being able to batter your opponent down with your intellect and your moral integrity; realistic it may not be, but satisfying it most definitely is. Mackenzie, of course, realised she’d been had and told the boyfriend to “go to Hell”, while Will made better use of his money to pay the ransom for the captive Kahlid.

This was where the schmaltz came in, rather too heavily for my taste. Earlier in the story, much had been made of Will’s fondness for a tearjerking sport movie called Rudy. Sorkin’s use of sport and sporting drama as reference/metaphor is always rather lost on me for a variety of reasons. I don’t really like sport, most American sporting dramas are about sports we know little of in the UK (baseball, American football), and the vast majority of sport movies are mawkishly sentimental in the extreme (Rocky, Jerry Maguire, A League of Their Own).

So I was unfortunately completely unmoved at what I presume to be a recreation of the heartstring-tugging ending of Rudy – staffer after staffer came in to Will’s office to pay what they could towards the $250,000 Will had paid to secure Kahlid’s release. To be fair to Sorkin, it felt less contrived when it was revealed that Mackenzie (knowing Will’s fondness for the movie) had orchestrated the stunt as a Valentine’s present. It still felt unpalatably sickly though.

Still, as usual there was enough good stuff for me to forgive the comparatively infrequent Sorkin excesses of sentiment. I can understand the objection that the show is “too preachy”, but for me that’s a huge part of its appeal. Yes, Sorkin is using the drama as a political platform, but he’s also using the drama to inform, to debunk widely held conservative myths using facts rather than ill-informed rhetoric – the very mantra of the show within the show, News Night. Of course, your tolerance for this is probably in direct proportion to your agreement with Sorkin’s leanings, and I fear he’s preaching to the choir and unlikely to change the minds of any watching conservatives. But for liberals like me, there’s something very entertaining in seeing your views borne out with actual research, and that polemic is at least half of the show’s appeal. With February 2011 out of the way, I’m looking forward to seeing what issues will be addressed next.

True Blood: Season 5, Episode 7–In the Beginning

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 7 YET.

“I have been born again. Made again, in my new Maker’s image.”

After the glut of action last week, it was back mostly to intrigue and plotting in this week’s True Blood. Hardly a surprise, as the season’s only halfway through – I really don’t think they could have maintained (and stepped up) that level of madness for the next six episodes!

Foremost in the intrigue was the ongoing backstabbing in the vampire Authority. After his deliciously feral rampage last week, Russell Edgington was contained surprisingly easily by Authority security, though not before amusingly hanging Eric from a nearby pillar. Given the sheer power Russell had displayed and his apparent madness, it seemed odd that he should be so easily overpowered. But as usual, there was a reason. As speculated last week, the whole thing had been deliberately orchestrated by Salome as a kind of palace coup. With Roman out of the way, Salome was free to let her Sanguinista beliefs all hang out. Escorted to her chamber, Bill and Eric found her luxuriating in her newfound power, along with the now freed Nora. And – surprise, surprise – a newly contrite, ‘born again’ Russell.

I was as sceptical as Bill and Eric about Russell’s claim to have turned over a new leaf, but I needn’t have been. Whatever Russell’s true intentions, the Sanguinistas’ agenda of subjugating humanity is pretty much in line with what he’s always wanted anyway. As a consequence, we got to see Denis O’Hare back to his sinister, manipulative turn as the deceptively friendly Russell, all laid-back charm and convincing Southern manners. He’s still the best villain the show’s come up with, and it’s nice to be reminded that his evil encompasses far more than just unrestrained ferocity.

Russell may or may not be a believer in the Sanguinistas’ fundamentalist religious beliefs, but he’s certainly playing along convincingly enough. As Salome assembled what was left of the Council to commit the ultimate heresy of drinking Lilith’s long-preserved blood, Dieter was the only dissenter; and for his pains, he got a lightning fast decapitation at Russell’s hands. The Authority are falling like dominoes – Roman last week, and now Dieter. I shall miss actor Christopher Heyerdahl in the part; he does this sort of thing so well that he’s pretty much typecast (see also his bloody terrifying turn as the demon Alastair in Supernatural).

After that demonstration of the rewards dissenters can expect, it was no surprise that the remaining Council members were jumping over themselves to join Salome in her ‘heresy’. Of course, Bill and Eric aren’t ‘believers’, but don’t see the harm in playing along. After all, as Eric says, “it’s just vampire blood. What could happen?”

Quite a lot, as it turns out. As the mother of all vampires, Lilith’s blood plainly has quite a kick. Hence the immediate jump cut to the whole fang gang stumbling through the party thronged streets of New Orleans, plainly in a trippy/drunken state, and eager for confrontation with the ‘”cattle” of humanity. Russell seems to have found a new soulmate in ‘gay vampire American’ Steve Newlin, who admires his Blues Brothers-style disguise.

Bill and Eric were just as affected as the rest, joining in as they terrified an impatient cab driver who dared to sound his horn at them. The cabbie got off lightly though. In a darkly comic scene, the vampires showed up to slaughter a pretty nauseating wedding party at a nearby bar, their appearance heralded by Russell suddenly joining the bride in singing ‘You Light Up My Life’. Frankly, after that I’d have been tempted to slaughter them.

And it seems the slaughter has been capable of actually summoning up Lilith from beyond the grave, as she formed herself from a pool of blood and stepped out full-frontal nude to join her subjects. It wasn’t clear whether this was real, or a hallucination brought on by her powerful blood. But Eric had a different vision, as a spectral Godric popped up to tell him that what was happening was wrong. It seems ironic that Eric, previously shown as pretty amoral, is now becoming the conscience for other vampires. But it was nice to see Allan Hyde as Godric again; being as natively Swedish as Alexander Skarsgard meant that they could carry on a fluent conversation in that language.

So, perhaps unexpectedly, Eric’s conscience may be humanity’s only hope. It’s a measure of how well done True Blood is that I really don’t mind seeing the plot of vampires trying to subjugate humanity yet again – even this show has been there before, with Russell’s plans in the third season. Strategically though, it looks a bit dodgy. After all, humanity all know about vampires now, and they outnumber them millions to one. Surely even with their powers, those are odds the vampires can’t beat? Stay tuned, I guess, and we shall see…

If the Sangunistas’ plans seemed rather familiar, so too did one of this week’s other main narratives, as Hoyt became increasingly caught up with the gang of good ol’ boys going around shooting supernaturals while wearing Obama masks. They may be a bit more amateurish, but this surprisingly diverse hate group are basically a rerun of season two’s Christian hate group (and Steve Newlin’s old outfit) the Fellowship of the Sun.

Still, the show’s having some fun with them – they got some laugh out loud dialogue as Hoyt proclaimed “I’ve felt more love and affection in this hate group than I have anywhere else”, to which their leader passionately replied, “that’s right, hate groups are about so much more than just hate!” They may be pretty dense, and the dialogue may be pretty funny, but there’s a good underlying point there about the feeling of community and shared identity that presumably holds hate groups together. Perhaps it will be developed further in later episodes.

Sam and Sheriff Andy got their fair share of this plotline too, as they continued their investigation into the shooters. So we got treated to the spectacle of Sam writhing around sniffing at the floor to track them while a deputy looked on in some surprise, and Andy paying a visit to his crusty predecessor as Sheriff, Bud Dearborne, for a bit of professional reassurance. It was nice to see the ever excellent William Sanderson back for a cameo as Bud, who was none too sympathetic at being interrupted by Andy when he had a hot tub appointment with his fancy woman in his wife’s absence!

Lafayette’s brujo demon problem also got some prominence this week, as he travelled down to see Jesus’ uncle Don Bartolo, unsurprisingly the one behind the whole thing. As nasty as ever, Bartolo promptly clobbered Lafayette, sewed his lips shut and prepared to sacrifice him to retake the ‘magic’ that Jesus had given him. I expected Lafayette to be last minute saved by Jesus’ ghost, but in the event it was Don Bartolo’s abused wife who stepped up and stabbed him from behind. Like the Master said in Doctor Who after a similar plot development, “it’s always the women”. But are Lafayette’s problems over? Somehow, I rather doubt that…

There was also time to pay quick visits to some of the other plotlines, just to keep them bubbling along. Tara and Pam got one significant scene, as Tara’s reformed alcoholic Christian mom turned up at Fangtasia to disown her while she was pole dancing. A comforting chat with Pam showed how she’s mellowed as a character, despite trying to hide it; she now thinks of herself as Tara’s real mother. It was a nicely played little exchange, though I kept being distracted by Pam’s new frizzy hairstyle – I don’t like it. Nice to know I’m paying attention to the dramatic details that really matter.

After a scene of Arlene watching her and Terry’s wedding video (presumably a new recording, as it was clear this happened during Sookie’s absence in fairyland), we got to see a quick look at the man himself as he waited resignedly for death at the hands of the fiery Ifrit. But as it turns out, the Ifrit isn’t ready to kill him or Patrick – yet. It popped up, laughed at them, and buggered off. I’m guessing they’ve made a strategic miscalculation here – the curse was that “you and all you love will burn”. I think Arlene and the kids are probably next on the charbroiling list, and Terry had better get back to Bon Temps pronto.

And finally, Jason and Sookie were dealing with the revelations from their fairy cousins. Jason, trying to reconcile his friendship with Jessica with the newfound knowledge that vampires killed his parents, ended up in an almighty fight with her at Bill’s mansion. Only in True Blood could a domestic tiff end with one of the participants being shot in the head after having tried to drink the blood of the other, with both able to come back for round two at a later date!

Sookie, meanwhile, had been told by Claude (more of Claude, please) that, being only half-fairy, her magic was finite and could be exhausted. Leaving her, basically, as normal and human as anyone else (which isn’t many people in this show). It was an interesting dilemma, summed up in a conversation with Sam – if you’re in a minority group trying to fight prejudice from ‘normals’, would it count as giving up to simply succumb to the temptation to join their number?

Given the show’s recurring subtexts, it was hard not to see this as another comment on real life outsiders like homosexuals, particularly with the myriad, usually religiously-backed, ‘ex-gay’ therapies so common in the US. Sookie maintained that even as a ‘normal’ she could continue her fight against prejudice and injustice, but even so it was disappointing to see her decision to try and exhaust her fairy magic and give up her identity. Jason was rushing off to investigate, so perhaps he’ll talk her out of it…

It would be easy to criticise the show this season for a few things – primarily, redoing plots it seems to have done before, retreading past glories by bringing back previous villains, and cramming so many plots in that it’s hard to keep up with them. But True Blood does it all with such gusto that it’s still hugely enjoyable, a mad, OTT supernatural soap whose excesses are hard not to love. There may be little here that’s new, but I’m still enjoying it immensely.

The Newsroom: Season 1, Episode 4–I’ll Try to Fix You

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM SUNDAY’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 4 YET.

“What you do is a really bad form of pollution, that makes us dumber, and meaner, and is destroying civilisation. I’m saying, with all possible respect, that I would have more respect for you if you were a heroin dealer.”

After being pushed very much to the background last week, the soap opera aspects of The Newsroom pretty much dominated this week’s episode. And you know what? It was actually very entertaining, and as ever, the character drama came to have a real bearing on the points Aaron Sorkin was trying to make, and the larger issues of the plot as a whole.

For most of the episode, the actual news reporting was fairly thin on the ground, eclipsed for the first time by the drama/comedy surrounding the characters. But the Sorkin sermonising (not necessarily a bad thing) was very much in evidence both in these occasional flashes of the news and in the drama throughout.

Targeted again this week was the extreme right, and particularly its outspoken mouthpieces in the media. Hence, Will had a pop at the media narrative that Obama is fanatical about gun control, debunking that myth and adding that those who propagate it benefit by gaining viewers and a massive upswing in gun sales. The point was not to take a stance about gun control (though later events in the story made Sorkin’s views on that pretty clear) but to highlight the media lies about it from many hyperbolic rightwing institutions. Considering that the show is primarily about media integrity, this was an important distinction to make, one that was hammered home repeatedly by characters within the show not ‘getting it’ themselves.

To follow that up, Will took an indepth look at the media myth current at the time that Obama was spending $2 billion of taxpayer money on a trade negotiating trip to India. Again, this was thoroughly debunked with actual facts rather than rumour (“travelling with 34 warships, or 14% of the US Navy?!”). These retorts were aimed at actual clips of hard right pundits such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, which intrigued me a little. Do these guys need to give permission for footage of them to be used on a drama show, I wonder? If so, it seems remarkably magnanimous of them to allow that use in such a damning context on such a liberal-leaning script! Mind you (and again, I’m not too clear on the state law here), I spent a while early in the episode marvelling that Will McAvoy can so freely smoke in the workplace. Having been to New York City, I know that smoking is banned in most such places…

I must say though, that the show’s consistent focus on debunking the myths of the right is in danger of making Will McAvoy and co seem as partisan as those whose work they’re decrying. OK, Will is employing facts rather than rhetoric or opinion, but the repeated target of his (admittedly well-constructed) arguments seems quite one-sided. Is the US liberal media (small though it may be) not guilty of any similar transgressions? I’m no rightwinger, but I’ve seen plenty of left wing polemic that could equally easily be demolished by the use of actual facts. Sorkin has the getout clause that Will is a centrist, moderate Republican, but thus far we’ve seen scant evidence that he holds much in the way of conservative views. I suppose it’s fair to say that the liberal media play a far smaller part in shaping the American political narrative as a whole, making them less of a viable target. Still, some balance would be welcome.

Having said all that, the politics seemingly took second place this week in an episode primarily devoted to advancing the character drama. This it did very well, and I’m warming to this aspect of the show more than I did at the beginning, when the characters seemed little more than cyphers.

It all began at a typically awkward workplace New Year’s Eve party, which at least means the story has now advanced to 2011. Much relationship-based skulduggery was unfolding, as Don (still, at this point, being an unperceptive asshole) tried to set Maggie’s roommate Lisa up with Jim, while Neal was functioning as the comic relief nerd, in his overly earnest attempts to convince his workmates that Bigfoot is actually real. I thought this thread, returned to throughout the episode, did his character something of a disservice after having skewed the stereotypical perception of ‘nerds’ last week. But aside from giving a few cheap laughs, it did ultimately have a payoff at the end of the show.

As did Will’s comically hilarious attempts to date various women, with the dubious advice of the none too helpful Sloan (The Daily Show’s Olivia Munn). “This is not my area of expertise”, she commented – a reference to fellow Daily Show alumnus John Hodgman’s book The Areas of My Expertise, perhaps? In any case, a slight degree of contrivance, that put Will in social situations with women he was bound to disagree with, allowed us to see how his forthright principles make him a pretty lousy Don Juan. Each encounter started well, developed into an argument, and ended with Will having a drink thrown in his face. A bit forced maybe, but done so well by Jeff Daniels that it was hard not to laugh while simultaneously nodding in agreement with him.

Significantly, the first of these ill-advised pickup attempts was a gossip columnist for ACN’s own parent company, and it was she who held the key to the theme of the whole cleverly constructed script – the disturbing rise of the celebrity gossip culture, and its increasing precedence over news that that actually has any real import. As the episode progressed, Will found himself at the centre of a suspiciously well-informed campaign of gossip attack that had details of each and every one of his failed conquests.

Again, Will’s diatribes made Aaron Sorkin’s stance on this culture fairly clear – why, Will kept arguing, is a ‘celebrity’ personal life somehow fair game for the kind of invasion of privacy that most people would find monstrous? And why, when so many genuinely important things are happening in the world, do so many choose to focus on this instead? The whole ironic “guilty pleasure” thing was dismissed summarily (shortly before its exponent, Will’s second date of the week, threw the requisite drink in his face).

In the UK, we’re familiar with such arguments from the interminably long Leveson Inquiry into press standards, which despite its length seems to throw up new horrors every week. And yet, while I tend to share Sorkin’s views, I found his contempt for that public appetite for gossip a little difficult to deal with. It’s one thing to condone the tapping of a public figure’s private phone message, but quite another (and far less serious) to enjoy the glut of reality shows that came in for so much withering criticism from Will. I too think they’re asinine nonsense (as I wrote in a VERY ranting blog post once), but I’ve realised that I have no right to deny other people’s enjoyment of this stuff whatever my opinion of it. People have different tastes. And if enjoying the panem et circenses of reality shows is a choice freely taken (without underhand exploitation of their ‘stars’), who am I to deny it?

Still, the gossip campaign against Will continued to mount until, finally, it became clear that it was the advancement of a vital plot thread whose apparent abandonment I was ready to be critical about this week. Charlie suddenly realised that, given some of the information, the gossip had to be coming from inside their own organisation. And suddenly it became clear that this was the ‘context’ Leona Lansing had talked about manufacturing last week, the climate by which it would be seen as righteous for ACN to sack Will. This was a very clever way of both advancing the story and addressing the theme of invasive celebrity gossip, and it was at this point that I marvelled somewhat at Sorkin’s clever construction of the narrative.

The Maggie/Don/Jim romcom plot was also heavy throughout, but actually seemed more plausible than in previous instalments. Maggie is still inexplicably intent on salvaging her relationship with Don, but obviously hasn’t come to terms with her feelings for Jim yet. And plainly, despite his altruism in trying to salve her relationship, neither has Jim, hence feeling the need to lie about how well his date with her roommate went and whether he’d be seeing her again. Unfortunately for Maggie, Don chose this point to demonstrate that he’s still an asshole by underhandedly revealing to her that Jim was again with Lisa late at night (“she really should change that ringtone”). This led to an almighty slanging match in the newsroom which severely disrupted Neal’s latest attempt to promote the reality of Bigfoot in the meeting room (“this isn’t soundproof glass!”).

This may seem like pretty light stuff, but it was genuinely enjoyable to watch. And the show managed to pull an eleventh hour ‘serious’ plot thread from its sleeve with the sudden news of the January 2011 Tucson shootings at a rally for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Suddenly we were again into one of those electrifying, action-packed ‘breaking news’ moments that the show does so well. And along the way came another chance to reaffirm our heroes’ atypical integrity, as they refused to bow to corporate pressure to follow other news organisations’ lines in pronouncing Giffords dead without official confirmation.

Here again, the show’s setting in the recent past perhaps allowed too much perfection in Will and co’s reporting, but it also gave Don the chance to unexpectedly reveal that he’s not a complete asshole after all. In the face of corporate lackey Reece’s furious insistence that Will pronounce Giffords dead, Don spoke up to say, “doctors pronounce people dead, not the news”. It was an unabashed ‘punch the air’ moment, made more resonant by the sentiment being put forward by the show’s resident dickhead, and made Don finally seem like less of a cardboard cutout asshole. Mind you, I had to wonder at the time why Will couldn’t have commented with something like “some news outlets are reporting the Congresswoman’s death, however there is no confirmation for this at this time and we will update you when we have an official statement either way”.

It was another great set piece of reportage, but I did have one criticism. I really wish Sorkin would refrain from employing what’s by now a massively overused cliche of US drama – the climactic montage soundtracked by a ‘profound’ emotional song. In this case, it was Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’, which Sorkin obviously likes well enough to quote in the episode title. While it might work as dramatic shorthand, it’s such an overused trope by now that you’d think a dramatist of Sorkin’s skill wouldn’t fall back on it so easily.

Criticisms aside, this was another enjoyable episode of a show that, for me, is improving week by week from an already promising start. I’m glad to see that The Newsroom has definitely been renewed for a second season, as given time it might even rival the venerated West Wing in viewers’ affections.

True Blood: Season 5, Episode 6–Hopeless

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 6 YET.

“Maybe you’re ready to die. Maybe you’re bored after a thousand years. But you do not get to make that decision for me.”

As I predicted last week, it was all action in this week’s ep of True Blood, as the multifarious plots careered forward at breakneck speed. Unlike, say, Game of Thrones, which rests some plotlines in most episodes, this one managed to squeeze pretty much every one in, while showrunner Alan Ball’s script, typically, still managed not to neglect the rich characters in the mix.

Sookie had her hands full dealing with two of the plotlines this week. First, we had to deal with her expedition to find the missing Russell Edgington, along with Bill, Eric and Alcide. In the deserted hospital last week, they’d found Russell seemingly laid out on a stretcher and barely capable of movement. Again as predicted, he was faking it, and mayhem soon ensued as his werewolf henchmen erupted from every available crevice.

As I’ve remarked before, Russell is probably the show’s most effective villain, due in large part to Denis O’Hare’s full throttle performance. Returned from the grave and plenty pissed, he didn’t hold back this week with the mania. After Alcide had seen off the werewolves, some taciturn Authority soldiers turned up to retrieve Russell, Bill and Eric, and Russell was set to stand trial at Authority HQ.

Sookie had already left, which was unfortunate as her fairy magic had once again been capable of blasting Russell off his feet. As is standard in this plotline (see Marvel’s The Avengers for a recent example) the Authority’s confidence that they could hold the deranged villain was entirely misplaced. Dragged in for execution, Russell revealed his true colours (as if he’d ever been hiding them) in an enraged tirade against both the Sanguinistas and the Authority, calling them both hypocrites for their differing fundamentalist views of a holy book he regards as nonsense.

Yet again, this is interesting stuff from a religious perspective, painting both factions as irreconcilable fundamentalists whose only difference is their interpretation of the vampire Bible. As almost every major religion is rent with sectarian conflict derived from such different interpretations, you couldn’t really look at it as just an attack on Christianity per se. And yet the universe of True Blood has rarely featured any other religion (Greek gods and Celtic faeries notwithstanding), so it’s hard to see it as anything else.

It looked like Russell was poised to be a Sanguinista martyr, regardless of his own views and much to the cellbound Nora’s apparent ecstasy. And yet when Roman used his phone to activate Russell’s iStake, things went tits up in a major way. Not only did it not work, but Russell was on the hunky Authority leader in a microsecond, gorily staking him. I shall miss Christopher Meloni as Roman, but this was not at all an unexpected turn of events. Nora may indeed be the Sanguinista fanatic she seems, but I think she and her movement are going to find out that Russell is far from the easily manipulated pawn they expected!

The only question we still haven’t had answered is that of who freed him in the first place. Given that it was her responsibility to fit Russell with that iStake that mysteriously failed to function, it looks like it could be Salome. But the delight of this show is that this kind of reveal at this point is almost certainly a red herring. Or is it a double bluff, and that’s what we’re meant to think?

Still, Russell’s back to cause havoc, which can only be a good thing for the fans, and we can expect more of him next week. Unaware of his rampage, Sookie had to deal first with Alcide’s apparent, sudden revulsion to her (a nice touch, as jealous old Eric had glamored him not to touch Sookie “like that”). Understandably vexed she went off on a rant at the bar about how much of a pain in the ass the men in her life were. As if to prove it, up popped Jason, to drag her off to the fairy nightclub in search of the truth about their parents’ death.

No surprise again that Sookie found the magic gate to the club in seconds, dragging Jason in behind her. The fairies, as ever, are all deceptively good looking, but in a very artificial, photoshopped-magazine way. Given that they apparently shape themselves to the onlooker’s conception of beauty, that’s an amusing comment on society’s unreal expectations of appearances these days. Unless, of course, the show’s casting people missed the irony…

Be that as it may, I’ve never cared much for artificially gym-buffed men with curiously hairless bodies, so it was a relief for me that Sookie’s required torrent of exposition was delivered by one much more to my taste. Claude (previously played by a different actor when he helped Sookie escape Queen Mab last year) is played by cute, slender Brit Giles Matthey, who we’d previously seen so intriguing Jessica a couple of episodes ago. I hope to see more of him (as it were) as the season progresses.

Together with Hadley, he revealed that these were a rogue sect of fairies hiding both from Mab and the vampires, and that a mysterious vampire had indeed lured the Stackhouse parents to their death in a flood all those years ago, drawn by the scent of Sookie’s blood in their car. As we didn’t see the vampire’s face, this is yet more intrigue, not to mention another burden of guilt for poor old Sookie, the unluckiest woman in Bon Temps.

Arlene wasn’t faring much better though. Terry and Patrick had fled the frankly terrifying Ifrit and returned to Bon Temps, only for Terry to finally explain the whole thing, including his part in what is, basically, a war crime. Of course, Arlene leapt to the conclusion that he was off his meds, and this was another manifestation of his PTSD, but Terry was adamant about not returning to their house and putting her and the kids in danger. So maybe Sookie has competition for that ‘unluckiest woman’ title; after all, Arlene has had her first husband turn out to be a serial killer, been haunted by a baby snatching ghost and had her house burned down already since the series began!

Terry’s cousin Sheriff Andy was meanwhile on the trail of the redneck shooters who’d been hunting shapeshifters (and it turned out, other supernaturals), with Sam as his ‘dogged’ assistant. Luna’s daughter, in wolf form, had fled the attack to her grandmother’s house, and it looks like this plot at least might be put to rest now; Martha seems happy to be involved in her granddaughter’s life without wanting to take her from her mother.

In an increasingly crowded season, putting one plot at least to bed has to be a good idea. But there’s still Marcus’ old pack to deal with; Alcide knows they were the ones helping Russell, and he’s out for blood in a duel with their nominal leader. Lafayette got to discuss his dead boyfriend’s spectral head apparition with his incarcerated mother (the excellent Alfre Woodard). And Tara, taking something of a back seat this week, is still smarting at Pam’s virtual enslavement of her. While Hoyt, desperate for anyone to suck his blood, can’t be convinced that Jessica doesn’t want him any more (and it looks like he’s right). Resorting to offering his throat to a scuzzy older guy vampire, he’s rudely interrupted by the mob of shooters, who seem to know who he is…

As I said, a heck of a lot going on this week, with the action slightly crowding out the ironic humour that’s often present in the show. The characters were far from neglected, but with so much going on, they didn’t really develop very much. Still, it’s hard to carp when the show is moving with this kind of breathless, riveting pace. We’re actually only halfway through the season, so I’m guessing the show’s going to have to take a breather at some point!

The Newsroom: Season 1, Episode 3–The 112th Congress

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 3 YET.

“The newsroom turned into a courtroom because I decided the American people needed a fucking lawyer.”

The news media is vitally important to a free society (unlike, say, sports or comedy, the subjects of Aaron Sorkin’s other two TV-based drama series). It’s only through the news that you know anything of what is happening in the world outside your own immediate experience. It is therefore vital that, when you receive the news, you’re not being presented with opinion – you’re being presented with facts. Those facts will shape your own opinion, and if you don’t trust their source because of bias or corruption, then you’re not equipped with enough information to form a reasoned view on anything. Conversely, if you blindly trust their source despite bias or corruption, the same result is true.

That the American TV news has failed in this was pointed out in painstaking detail in this week’s episode of The Newsroom, beginning with Will McAvoy making an onscreen apology for his own complicity in this failure – from miscalled election results to outright misinformation from news organisations held hostage by commercial interests, specifically the advertisers from whom the broadcasters gain all their revenue.

Will’s diatribe, the concentrated detail of which took a lot of paying attention to, was obviously Sorkin’s own attempt to diagnose the problem with TV news in the US. The increasing divorce of US TV news from facts and its ongoing affair with opinion as a rebound can often seem strange to us in the UK, where (by and large) our TV news is regulated and obliged to remain free of bias. It’s frequently accused of bias (especially the BBC), but the fact that the accusations are balanced from both sides of the argument indicates to me that it at least tries to live up to that obligation.

US TV news, by contrast, often seems closer in style to UK print media, where paranoia, half-truths and corruption are regularly peddled according to the corporate whims of their owners and sponsors. That sector of our news media has now so thoroughly disgraced itself in the eyes of the British public that we’re in the middle of a lengthy judicial inquiry into its ethics and practices; by Sorkin’s argument, the misinformation fed so frequently to the American public by its TV news outlets would probably merit something similar.

One of the major criticisms that many (including myself) have had of The Newsroom from its first two episodes is precisely that Will McAvoy and co’s eager attempt to claw back integrity from the increasingly jaded news media is simply too utopian; that in the real world, those commercial interests simply would not permit an approach so potentially damaging to profit. Sorkin seems to have anticipated this, and this third episode was framed with a new subplot of ACN’s corporate owners giving idealistic news veteran Charlie a damn good bollocking for going against the corporate line.

As a framing narrative, it was effective, with Jane Fonda as Leona Lansing, CEO of Atlantis Media, parent corporation to ACN, glowering silently at Sam Waterston’s Charlie for most of the time, even during a comical attempt to liken his strategy to that of Rocky Balboa in Rocky II. The casting of Fonda is a nice nod to her own iconic role as a crusading news anchor in 1978’s The China Syndrome, but here she’s on the other side of the debate – and when she finally speaks up, it’s like the wrath of a deity of pragmatic profiteering.

The corporate inquiry was peppered throughout by flashbacks to events at News Night in recent months, beginning with Will’s eloquent apology then building through the months of campaigning prior to the 2010 midterms to the climax of election night itself. Along the way, the show’s ideology took precedence over its soap opera aspects as the ACN staff laid into Aaron Sorkin’s target of the week – the Tea Party movement.

As usual, this revolved around characters having a seemingly implausible supply of facts and statistics readily at hand to debunk the arguments of their opponents. But fair’s fair – it’s a news organisation, half the characters are researchers, and those researchers feed the figures to the anchor as interviews progress. Plus, I’m sure they’re capable of remembering the research they’ve done; certainly I’ve been able to pull those kinds of facts out of my mind in pub arguments when I’ve researched them earlier in the day for pieces on this blog.

I was again struck by Sorkin’s clever tactic of having McAvoy, as his main character, be a moderate Republican. As Will himself comments, it legitimises his attacks on ultra-right wing targets. And make no mistake, the Tea Partiers who gained so much ground in the 2010 Congressional elections were ultra-right. As Will himself complained, they were a fringe movement (with, initially, some valid arguments) hijacked by corporate and religious extremists, who themselves went on to hijack the mainstream Republican Party to the extent that US politics has been largely paralysed in uncooperating deadlock ever since.

That they were gaining so much influence was worrying given their apparent incomprehension of the issues they were protesting against. So Will (ie Aaron Sorkin) basically spent clip after clip debunking some of their more notorious misconceptions. These included Sharron Angle’s “Second Amendment remedies” – “so basically, she’s not ruling out the idea of an armed overthrow of the elected government” – and the (at the time) little known fact that this ‘grass roots’ movement was in large part being funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, hardly “average Americans”.

As this went on, it became clear from the cutting back to the CEO inquiry that the corporation were not too pleased about this. Attacking corporatism means losing advertising revenue, not to mention the political awkwardness of losing the support of corporate-backed legislators. But back in the trenches, persistent asshole Don was none too pleased about it either, laying into the infinitely more competent Jim about how this totally undercut his attempts to gain success for the 10 o’clock bulletin straight afterwards.

Don continues to be the least believable character in the show, a serial asshole whose inability to learn from his own mistakes makes you continually wonder how he attained such a prestigious position. I saw a recent Facebook post proclaiming that “Aaron Sorkin can’t write characters who aren’t intellectuals”; this is a large part of the problem, but another part is that he can’t write sympathetic, rounded characters who disagree with him. It was notable that The West Wing’s portrayal of Republican characters actually became more rounded after Sorkin left the show.

Still, the continuing passion of most of the characters goes some way to making up for this, as does the increased portrayal of their own fallibilities. We saw last week how Will wasn’t immune to self-interest; this week, Charlie Skinner’s idealistic crusade to restore integrity to the news began to seem increasingly naive and optimistic in the face of his corporate overlords. Oh, and he also drinks too much – “you’ve had enough bourbon for a lifetime,” comments suit (and mother’s puppet) Reese.

With so much emphasis placed on the ideological crusade of the show this week, the soap opera aspects were less prominent than the first two episodes. I found this a bit of a relief. It’s not because I object to them altogether; I recognise that without being interested in these characters as people, it would be hard to sympathise with their crusade. It’s more that, generally, I think this aspect of the show is being handled in a rather more hamfisted way than it ever was in The West Wing.

Take MacKenzie, for example. She’s an immensely talented and capable professional, able to deal brilliantly and concisely with her egotistical star in their work environment. But introduce any element of their previous, personal relationship – as Will did this week by bringing a string of younger, sexier dates to the office – and she becomes a gibbering, competitive imbecile.

Then there’s Maggie. She at least takes Will to task for his insensitivity, and he listens to her. But she too is stuck in a relationship with the insufferable Don, which for some insane reason she seems incapable of permanently ending. And then the much more likeable Jim (who we’re being transparently manipulated into rooting for as her alternative) advises her to sort it out with Don, despite that being the worst result for himself. Thank heaven then for Neal, who lets Jim work this out via the convenient motif of working on a story about “people voting against their own interests”.

After an initial lack of impression, Neal is quickly becoming one of my favourite characters. He’s as impossibly ‘nice’ as the rest of the gang, but he comes up with the most interesting ideas regarding the future of news in an increasingly digital age – witness his impassioned defence of Wikileaks this week. He also seems to have a girlfriend himself, nicely derailing the usual stereotypes about socially awkward nerd. And it doesn’t hurt that Dev Patel has plainly been to the gym a fair bit since his painfully skinny shirtless scenes in Skins.

No, I’m still generally unconvinced by the ‘soap opera’ aspects of the show, which flowed so naturally in The West Wing. In fact, Aaron Sorkin has been taken to task (again – poor sod gets more of this than Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat) for failing to write credible, intelligent female characters. In MacKenzie’s case, I can see the problem – how can such an intelligent woman be so good at her job yet dissolve into babbling inanity when dealing with the same coworker on a personal level? But I don’t think you can reasonably level that criticism at the writer who created CJ Cregg.

And while there may be some of those problems with the character of Maggie, the one aspect of the show that struck a nerve for me this week was her portrayal of being prone to crippling panic attacks (which Don, typically, just lets her get on with out of his way). I want to be quite clear – this is not a gender issue, and it most certainly is not a ‘weakness’ issue.

I suffer from panic attacks just like these. They’re not ‘being a drama queen’ or ‘attention seeking’ – they’re a genuinely terrifying, crippling set of mental AND physiological symptoms which hit you at times you don’t expect and for reasons you don’t understand, rendering you physically incapable of dealing with the world around you. I tend to keep my own vulnerability to these very much under wraps, as it’s still often perceived as weakness or overdramatisation. I can only hope that the very convincing depiction of it in this show might enlighten its viewers in the same that The West Wing did for multiple sclerosis.

This episode cleverly had two, contradictory endings. One showed Will, Charlie and the staffers celebrating their perceptive election coverage in the usual karaoke bar. This climaxed with the email to Charlie summoning him to the meeting we’d been seeing throughout – a meeting that, just before the bar scene, had ended with Leona’s ultimatum that Will tone it down or be sacked. Clearly, Charlie’s crusade is already in danger.

Which I hope The Newsroom isn’t, despite its mixed reception. Sure, I still think it’s flawed, but episode by episode it seems to be building on its strengths. And if not eliminating its flaws, at least pushing them somewhat to the background. Only three episodes in, and it feels like it’s gaining complexity and credibility from its initial naively optimistic and utopian premise. I’d like to see more of that.

True Blood: Season 5, Episode 5–Let’s Boot and Rally

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 5 YET.

“I keep thinking that if I just made the right choice, the madness would end and life would go back to normal. But it won’t ever end, will it?”

Looks like episode 5 is the point where the steamy gumbo of True Blood finally starts to boil over, as plot setups finally give way to action, revelation and yet more twisty, turny backstabbing. All laced with a delicious soupcon of meta self-awareness, as several characters begin to mock the sheer supernatural insanity that makes up everyday life in Bon Temps.

The first of those, unsurprisingly, was Sookie Stackhouse. Having dragged Alcide to her bedroom then somewhat spoiled the moment by puking on his shoes, she couldn’t resist a good laugh as Bill and Eric turned up to dragoon her into the search for Russell. Her half-amused, half-weary resignation as she headed for the door, keen to get yet another supernatural civil war out of the way – “must be Thursday” – was pretty funny, if somewhat reminiscent of similar humour in the later seasons of Buffy.

I must say though, her ability to almost instantly sober up after having been, a few minutes before, so drunk that she couldn’t keep her stomach contents in, stretched plausibility. This is actually a pretty common trope in many thrillers, film and TV, supernatural and conventional. A key character will choose to drown his/her sorrows, getting completely blotto, at which point something vital to the plot will occur. Said character will then become instantly capable of action (perhaps with complaints of a headache to show that drunkenness wasn’t completely forgotten about). As opposed to most real people, who would stagger about, fall over, keep needing to urinate, and probably get killed.

Still, Sookie’s not real, and we’re not looking at gritty realism here (quite the reverse, if anything). And maybe being part-fairy gives her a pretty high tolerance for alcohol. So off she went with the bickering trio of lovelorn supernatural suitors, to use her mindreading ability to probe the glamoured memory of Alcide’s boss Doug, the only witness to Russell’s exhumation.

Her mind probe (“no, not the mind probe!”) instantly revealed that Russell had been dug up by a) a woman and b) a member of the Authority. Given the way previous episodes have shown the Authority to be a hotbed of subversion and religious sectarianism, this was hardly a surprise. But in order to maintain some level of suspense and uncertainty, the woman was conveniently wearing a face-shielding hat. So which is it? Nora? Salome? Rosalyn? Or perhaps someone we haven’t even seen yet?

Further mind probing led our bickering heroes to that old staple of the traditional horror tale – a scary, dark, abandoned hospital which they would have to explore by torchlight. Again, Sookie took the lead in pointing out that they were, basically, in a cliched B movie, and subverting that by saying that no way were they going to split up and investigate separately. And for that matter, that her ‘fairy magic’ was pretty much the only weapon in their arsenal that had previously been effective against Russell, so this time she was protecting them. The point was amusingly underlined as the hulking, bearded Doug, quivering in fear, clung desperately to Sookie’s mind reading hand for comfort.

Cliched or not, the exploration of the creepy hospital was as well done as any iteration of this trope. The usual suspects were present – sudden, jump-inducing rats; dismembered body parts; a ‘larder’ full of hanging, terrified victims-to-be. For Bill and Eric, the stakes (as it were) were raised by the revelation (from the Authority’s relentlessly chipper tech geek) that their iStakes would kill them at dawn if they hadn’t found Russell.

But find him they did, surprisingly quickly. I must admit, I’d half expected him to have been spirited away by his unseen Sanguinista sponsors; but no, there he was, looking deceptively frail and shrunken on a gurney. Great to see Denis O’Hare back, with his former louche Southern accent as Russell. And since this is only episode 5, I’m willing to bet that he’s not nearly so infirm as he seems – I’m expecting some serious trouble with him next week.

Also confronting the bizarre proliferation of ‘supes’ this week were the Bon Temps PD, in the dogged forms of Andy Bellefleur and Jason Stackhouse. Investigating the mysterious shooting of Sam’s shifter friends, Andy received the news that Sam was yet another supernatural creature with a kind of weary resignation. Poor old Andy, it must be starting to seem to him like there are barely any mundane humans in the town he’s responsible for policing.

It didn’t help when Jason explained the identity of those hosting the party they’d been so unceremoniously thrown out of last week. After some initial comic confusion about the word ‘fairy’, Andy just seemed to give in out of despair, asking Jason to just not mention it again. I don’t think that’s really going to help. But it is amusing that the show’s characters, in-universe, are starting to find the whole thing pretty implausible now, and it helps subvert similar criticisms from the audience. Of course, whether those criticisms are justified is an entirely subjective thing.

And as if to give the finger to those critics, we had yet another supernatural being introduced as Terry and Patrick were told the tale of what was really responsible for the recent deaths of their old army buddies in mysterious housefires. Turns out it wasn’t their hyper-paranoid comrade Eller after all – he was the only one to remember, through their stoned recollection of the massacre of Iraqi civilians, that they’d been cursed by a woman (shortly before Terry himself, shockingly, silenced her with a shot to the head). The purveyor of that curse (“you and all you love will burn”) has finally come Stateside; and in keeping with the style of the show, it’s not a vengeance-crazed jihadi or a traumatised GI. It’s an Ifrit, an ancient Arabic fire demon.

Nicely visualised as a Supernatural-style cloud of black smoke, embers glowing from within, the Ifrit showed up to off Eller now he’d served his function of telling the other characters what’s going on. Patrick, now revealed as the main culprit for the massacre, didn’t believe a word of it (what’s the betting he’s next?), but it rang all too true for Terry. Thing is, now he’s been shown as complicit in a war crime, how much will we now care if it comes for him? It’s a brave tactic to show a formerly sympathetic character in such a horrible light, one which, hopefully, might get viewers asking themselves a few questions about the US’s recent Arabic ‘adventures’.

Elsewhere, Lafayette is once again being seriously put through the wringer this season, understandably driven to near-distraction by his uncontrollable propensity to transform into a malicious Brujo-style demon at inconvenient moments. Unlike anyone else in the show, he’s told absolutely no-one about his troubles, which weren’t helped any by the not-entirely-unexpected reappearance of his dead boyfriend Jesus. Well, actually Jesus might have helped if it weren’t for the fact that he appeared as a gruesome severed head, trying unsuccessfully to speak through a sewn-up mouth. Luckily for Lafayette, help might just be at hand, as his mom too can see the apparition, and unlike him, she can understand what it’s trying to say…

And lastly, Tara, pressganged into bartending at Fangtasia, had a nice bit of bonding with Jessica as they discussed the tribulations of being a newly-made vampire, in a conversation freighted with the show’s frequent analogy between vampirism and homosexuality. “It gets better”, Jessica insisted, in case we missed the point.

This parallel is quite common in recent, liberal-leaning vampire tales – True Blood, with its ‘God Hates Fangs’ movement and ‘coming out of the coffin’ euphemism, is more overt than most. It’s an obvious comparison, you’d think – these vampires are (mostly) sympathetic characters struggling against mainstream society’s refusal to accept the ‘other’.

And yet it often disturbs me a little. As Tara and Jessica point out, vampires are consumed with a desire to rip apart all the humans around them, and their ability to restrain this urge is what makes them civilised. Taken to its logical extreme, the parallel would be that all homosexuals are filled with a near-uncontrollable urge to have sex with everyone of the same gender around them. The analogy is well-meaning, but speaking as a homosexual myself, I sometimes find that being compared to a species of genuinely dangerous predators makes me a little uncomfortable.

Still, Tara and Jessica’s newfound bond didn’t last long, as Tara took to feeding on newly-minted fangbanger Hoyt, and Jessica took exception to that. Their fight was nicely intercut in a montage narrated by a speech from Authority head honcho Roman that seemed to sum up the point the season has reached – and it’s a point of no return. From hereon in, expect the action to ramp up week by week!

The Amazing (?) Spiderman

FOR ONCE, I’VE WRITTEN A REVIEW THAT’S SPOILER-FREE, SO YOU CAN READ THIS EVEN IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET!

It’s the question all comic book geeks are asking – does the world really need another Spiderman movie, a mere five years after Sam Raimi wrapped up his webslinger trilogy with the bloated and underwhelming Spiderman 3? Columbia Pictures obviously thought so; or at least their accountants did. But it’s unfair to say that this is a movie motivated solely by profit, even if (presumably) that’s how it got started.

The Amazing Spiderman is crafted with the usual love and respect that Marvel superheroes usually get in the cinema (and DC heroes, with the exception of Batman and Superman, usually don’t). It’s fun, it’s entertaining, it passes two and a quarter hours of undemanding four-colour thrills without seeming overlong. But director Marc Webb, for all the budget and CG technology at his disposal, is no Sam Raimi. The end product is workmanlike rather than inspired, with some touches of genius, but it seems to be yearning to be a movie it’s not. And that movie is Batman Begins.

Yes, the most obvious inspiration for yet another Spidey origin story so soon after the one with Tobey Maguire is Christopher Nolan’s radical, realistic take on DC’s Caped Crusader. Screenwriters James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves plainly sat down to watch Nolan’s movie, notebooks in hand, ready to learn some lessons.

Some took well. With Batman Begins, Nolan went with the unusual gambit of not blowing the hero’s best known antagonist in the first movie, saving the Joker for the sequel. This avoided the ever-diminishing roll call of increasingly obscure villains throughout the increasingly naff 80s/90s Batman series, and additionally avoided the flamboyant Joker from pushing Batman into the background of his own movie.

The writers of Amazing Spiderman have, in a similar vein, decided to ignore Sam Raimi’s tactic of going straight in with the Green Goblin for their first movie. Instead we get the Lizard, aka Dr Curt Connors. It’s an interesting portrayal from Wales’ own Rhys Ifans (disappointingly using an English accent; I’d have loved the monster to be Welsh), but a slightly less successful one from a big green CG beastie with a vague approximation of Ifans’ features. It’s obviously a CG-heavy movie, and most of it works very well (especially the usual vertiginous Spiderman swinging round New York sequences). But the Lizard, while a cut above the Mill’s CG for Doctor Who, is pretty average CG compared to the rest of the movie. It’s notable that the character only really comes to life when it’s Ifans doing it live.

Also, while the Lizard is certainly a popular villain in the comics, he’s a little too similar to Raimi’s Dr Octopus from Spiderman 2 – a well-meaning scientist tempted into megalomania by his own creation, in this case the same ‘cross-species’ gene splicing that causes Peter’s condition. Again, if you want to properly reboot a series, try something completely different rather than something so similar to the last one. That was the problem in a nutshell with Bryan Singer’s overly reverential Superman Returns.

Where the movie does do well is in the portrayal of Spiderman himself. Obviously, there’s only so much fiddling you can do with his basic origin story – high school science whiz, lives with aunt and uncle, gets bitten by radioactive spider, discovers powers, uncle gets killed, sets out to use powers for good. That’s the essentials right there, and you can’t stray too far from them.

So here we get Martin Sheen replacing Cliff Robertson as folksy, homily-dispensing Uncle Ben, delivering a much wordier version of the “with great power comes great responsibility” speech – this time, something to do with an obligation to use your potential for the good of society. It’s delivered well by Sheen, who instantly recalls the pearls of wisdom dispatched by President Bartlet in The West Wing, but I don’t think it’s going to be endlessly quoted by fanboys like the previous one.

But Sheen is magnetically watchable in anything, and his workingman version of Uncle Ben is a good contrast to the scholarly Peter. It’s here where the movie really scores. I’m a longtime Spidey watcher – the cartoons, the 70s show with Nicholas Hammond, latterly the Tobey Maguire movies. And I think Andrew Garfield is by a long shot the best Spiderman I’ve ever seen.

I must admit, I was quite surprised at his casting, as (much like Maguire) he had a reputation as a ‘serious actor’ in some heavy dramatic fare. Where he scores over Maguire is that he brings the visceral, physical emotion of his performances in movies like Never Let Me Go to the part of Peter Parker. Spiderman is all physicality, but Peter is usually just a standard nerd; here, Garfield uses his body every bit as much as his voice and face as the hero’s real identity too. Witness his anguish when Uncle Ben is shot; his body is literally curling up into itself in grief, his face twisted unrecognisably as he sobs. Gotta say, it’s the first time that scene has left me with tears in my eyes.

But it’s not all angst. Garfield has in interviews professed to be a Spidey fan himself, and after this, I’m pretty convinced. He delivers the wisecracks as he delivers the punches, just as the character I remember from comics and films does. He also looks extremely good in the suit – as he’s again said in interviews, this is a skinny superhero, for skinny nerds to look up to, and I always thought Tobey Maguire’s buffed up physique was a tad excessive. Garfield’s biceps do look like he’s been put through the standard Hollywood training regime, but he retains his basic slender form and looks all the better for it. Even Jon Stewart on The Daily Show couldn’t help remarking on his “buns of steel”.

Love interest is provided by comic stalwart Gwen Stacy, here played as a resourceful, capable science whiz herself by Emma Stone. Fans of the movies (and more recent comics) may be surprised at the absence of better known love interest Mary Jane Watson, but Gwen actually predates her in the comics, and her ‘death’ in 1973 is one of the series’ best remembered moments.

Gwen, as ever, is an example of a fair bit of plot contrivance. Not only is she at school with Peter, not only is she the daughter of the straitlaced police chief trying to catch Spiderman (the excellent Denis Leary), but she is also, conveniently, the head intern for Dr Connors, giving Peter an immediate in at the soon-to-be villain’s lab. Connors is here recast into a reluctant player in a conspiracy which resulted in the deaths of Peter’s parents, a conspiracy orchestrated by the corporate magnate his dodgy gene-splicing is meant to cure. His name? Who else but Norman Osborn, soon to be (in the next movie presumably) the Green Goblin? Osborn is never seen in the movie, but his malign presence hangs over the whole thing, and I fully expect to see him in the inevitable sequel.

There are some good set pieces along the way, including some genuinely tense moments as Peter tries to rescue a child stuck in a car hanging from Williamsburg bridge, or latterly battles the Lizard on the dizzyingly high roof of the Oscorp building (take note, this is not a movie to see if you’re afraid of heights). Director Marc Webb pulls off these CG-heavy sequences with aplomb, and they’re a lot of fun; but they lack the sheer kinetic invention of the similar sequences in Raimi’s movies. Let’s not forget, Raimi was pulling off camera moves like that when he only had a $50 budget on The Evil Dead, whereas Webb…well, his last movie was the rather different (but still entertaining) 500 Days of Summer.

All told, this is a very entertaining movie and a good and faithful take on the Spiderman legend. Andrew Garfield is genuinely amazing as Peter and Spiderman (though he seems amazingly cavalier here about revealing his secret identity to almost everyone). And some of the lessons learnt from Batman Begins – not setting up the whole thing in the first movie with the best villain from the comics especially – are mostly well learnt. Though it’s hard to try for Nolan-style realism when your bad guy is a mutated lizard-human hybrid rather than just the human psychos of the Dark Knight’s world.

But still, enjoyable though it is, it all seems kind of unnecessary. It’s good, but it’s not different enough from Raimi’s films to make you think the character was crying out for a reboot. Ultimately, if you’ve never seen the 2001 Spiderman, you’ll love this. If you have, then you’ll enjoy it but have a nagging feeling of deja vu throughout.

The Newsroom: Season 1, Episode 2–News Night 2.0

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST SUNDAY’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 2 YET.

“We don’t do ‘good television’, we do the news.”

Critical reaction to last week’s premiere of Aaron Sorkin’s new show, The Newsroom, was, to put it mildly, mixed. While many liked the sincere, heartfelt performances, powerhouse speeches and super-eloquent characters, just as many were annoyed by its departure from reality in presenting an idealised version of a real environment (a TV newsroom) filled with idealised, too-wonderful characters who, as one common criticism put it, “talk like nobody in the real world”.

To be fair, these are all legitimate criticisms. I noted quite a few of them myself, in my own review last week. But that’s Aaron Sorkin’s style, and it seems a little harsh to have the knives drawn quite so early on a show whose flaws (if you see them that way) are no more than a repeat of those on the hallowed West Wing. That show too presented an idealised, ‘preachy’ version of a real environment – the White House, with the obvious intent being its writer telling us that this is how it could – and should – be. The Newsroom aims to do the same for a TV news environment dominated by pundits and opinions rather than facts and objectivity. That its first episode aired the same week that Fox and CNN managed to totally fumble reporting the Supreme Court’s decision on ‘Obamacare’, because they hadn’t read past page one of the judgement, seems curiously apposite.

That said, you couldn’t have week after week of the guys and girls at ACN doing perfect, crusading reporting unique in its integrity. Aside from problems with believability, it would be boring and formulaic. So this week’s instalment, after last week’s powerhouse broadcast of the BP oil spill disaster, showed our heroes, stumbling over the reporting of Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s draconian anti-immigration law of 2010, producing a mesmerising spectacle of car crash television that was an exemplary case of doing the news totally wrong.

It’s good to be shown that these people are fallible. That idealised version of reality can be both a blessing and a curse, and it’s hard to truly like characters who are, essentially, saints. Having said that, I’m afraid I can’t resist the criticism that, after last week’s excess of perfection, the similar excess of fallibility on display here seemed similarly implausible. The most obvious example was a running subplot about the recent setup of email distribution lists that only resident tech geek Neal seemed able to understand. This intersected with the increasingly romcom aspects of the plot to give us the moment when Mackenzie accidentally sent an email intended for Will, about the breakup of their previous relationship, to everyone in the company. With hilarious consequences.

Now, the plot really couldn’t have moved forward without this conceit, both from a professional and personal perspective. And yes, I’m sure that this kind of slip up does happen among office staff that aren’t very technically minded. But these people are meant to be seasoned professionals who are presumably perfectly conversant with email. And tellingly, it was essential to the plot that these people’s Blackberries never leave their sides. It seems unlikely that anyone so reliant on mobile email would be so incompetent in its use. But then, this is drama, and Sorkin’s style of drama often does depend on contrivance to move the plot forward.

Again, we saw that here as the script upped the ante in the romance stakes this week. Aside from the constant butting heads of Will and Mackenzie (who even compared their situation to a romantic comedy), the manoeuvring of Jim and Maggie into a relationship shifted up a gear. Their impossibly witty, quickfire bickering (actually reminiscent of that by a certain Steven Moffat) was funny, but perfectly demonstrated a common criticism of Sorkin – nobody in the real world talks like that. But again, it’s a dramatic and stylistic device – who’d want to watch a show where everyone stumbles over their speech with frequent pauses, coughs and “errm”s? Amusingly, this very point was put to Sorkin on a recent episode of The Colbert Report, and Sorkin responded to Stephen Colbert with a similarly contrived ‘naturalistic’ retort that, basically, said nothing. It’s a question of dramatic style, and how well you like it is probably subjective.

All that said, it was still a dynamic, gripping piece of television, with the actual broadcast, as last week, the dramatic highlight. Predictably, Jan Brewer dropped out (I hadn’t expected them to take actual interview footage of her and use it out of context), leaving Will with a trio of ill-informed ‘average citizens’ to defend her policy. Said policy was the subject of this week’s sermonising (always an essential ingredient for Sorkin), and in keeping with Mackenzie’s new Rules, both sides of the issue were looked at. It’s clear which way Sorkin himself swings, but it was an interesting choice to have the opposite viewpoint (immigrants steal jobs from hard-pressed Americans) put by Will himself.

The counterpoint, that this is basically a nasty bit of divisive racial profiling, was first stated by Neal early on in the episode – an interesting, or cliched choice depending on your viewpoint, Neal being both Indian in ethnicity and British in nationality. His impassioned plea to include an outspoken ‘illegal’ who’d had his travel to work removed for speaking his mind initially fell on deaf ears. But it was hardly a surprise that, by the end of the episode, Will’s opinions had swung Sorkin-wards, and he was up for anonymously providing said transport. A nice gesture to be sure, but to this cynical old curmudgeon, it also came across as desperately patronising: “Don’t worry, Latinos, the rich white guy has sorted it all out for you. You’re welcome.” That the episode climaxed with Radiohead’s ‘High and Dry’ juxtaposed with a long shot of the Statue of Liberty was, I’m afraid, one sickly heartstring-tugging gambit too much for me.

It may sound like I’m being pretty harsh on the show myself, but I should make it clear that I’m still enjoying watching it, for all the flaws that I (and, it seems, many others) see in it. The characters may be stock, but they’re likeable (except Don, who continues to be a one-dimensional asshole). They may speak with a degree of wit and passion rarely seen in reality, but it makes them more entertaining, in this kind of show, than the bumblingly naturalistic ones in other (equally valid) dramas. And that’s because they’re Sorkin characters – how you cope with that depends on your tolerance for his style. It’s interesting to note that his recent excursion into characters based on reality – The Social Network – contrived to do precisely the opposite, presenting all its characters as venal and unsympathetic. The Newsroom, like The West Wing before it, really is about idealism. It’s not perfect, and Sorkin may not be the god of dramatists many hold him up to be. But this week, like the last, still entertained and informed in a way that’s increasingly unusual in actual US news.