Critics Hammer Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom: ‘So Naive it’s Cynical’
via 10 vicious reviews of ‘The Newsroom’ – Patrick Gavin – POLITICO.com.
The critics have weighed in on Aaron Sorkin’s new drama, “The Newsroom,” starring Jeff Daniels as a news anchor struggling to put together a successful news program despite the obligatory pressures and obstacles.
The consensus? It’s not Sorkin’s finest work.
Here are the 10 harshest reviews of “Newsroom,” which debuts Sunday on HBO:
1. “‘The Newsroom’ had me contemplating that which is so feared in my industry: changing the channel. And I was watching it on DVD.” — ABC’s Jake Tapper, The New Republic
2. “…an exponentially tedious undertaking for the viewer…” — Hank Stuever, Washington Post
3. “It’s so naive it’s cynical.” — Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker
4. “…it all feels over-overwrought.” — Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post
One of the outstanding facts about cable television news is that Fox News Channel consistently and heavily beats MSNBC and CNN in ratings. A close look at cable television news would examine that fact and try to explain it. Instead, Sorkin wrote a show about a news reader who become so disgusted at his own even-handedness in reporting the news that he adopts a principled stand, which is to say a liberal bias. When this show gets cancelled even faster than Sorkin’s earlier “Studio 60″, he will adduce the same reason for it. Not that the show failed to entertain the viewers but that the lowbrow viewers failed to appreciate how good it is.
Well, if even such reliably liberal sources as Time, the NY Times, the LA Times, and the New Republic didn’t like this, maybe it’s good as an unintentional comedy! But I’ll be hanged if ever I waste my money on HBO…