Talking heads

The spirit of Howard Beale lives on in The Newsroom, HBO’s new series about broadcast media that premieres tonight. It’s also the latest offering from Aaron Sorkin — Mr. “Walk and Talk” himself — who offered a peek inside the White House in The West Wing and made the Facebook world so quotable in The Social Network.

So who’s Howard Beale, Facebook kids will wonder? You’ll have to do your research, kids: check out Network, the bitter, cynical 1976 satire on television that won Peter Finch a posthumous Oscar, playing a blistering, melting-down newscaster named Howard Beale — the man who made “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!” a national catchphrase.

Then fast-forward to Broadcast News, James Brooks’ 1982 romantic comedy about how appearance trumps substance in the TV age. Done? Okay, now you’re caught up for The Newsroom. (WARNING: This article contains spoilers about the season premier!)

The Newsroom stars Jeff Daniels as tepid TV anchor Will McAvoy who has a public meltdown on national television during the opening episode. Goaded by a young college student’s question (“What makes America the greatest country in the world?”), he begs to differ, launching into an eight-minute tirade that may remind people a bit of Jessie Eisenberg’s bitter (somewhat sexist) tirade in the opening of The Social Network — both bits of blustery rantation penned by Sorkin.

What would Murrow do?: Jeff Daniels is Will McAvoy, the tepid broadcaster on ACN’s nightly news in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series, The Newsroom.

“‘Best country in the world’?” McAvoy spews. “We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens, number of adults who believe angels are real, and amount of defense spending per capita.” It’s safe to say he’s not feeling very star-spangled. He then reminds the young blonde student (who he refers to as “sorority girl”): “You are, without a doubt, a member of the worst — period — generation — period — ever.”

After lacerating the student and venting his rage, McAvoy switches to a quavering, “serious” voice and describes what “used” to make America the best (as liberty bells toll on the soundtrack): “We were able to do all these great things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered.” (Cut to easily impressed Social Networkers capturing this moment on their cell phones, mouths agape. Unfortunately, your credibility suffers a bit after you’ve acted like such a complete a-hole on camera.)

Presumably, by “informed” McAvoy refers to great pioneers of TV journalism such as Ed Murrow and Walter Kronkite. Unfortunately, nowadays all we can handle is Anderson Cooper and Twitter feeds. The opening scene of The Newsroom is fairly edgy because it says what a lot of people sometimes think: that America’s “exceptionalism” needs to be reexamined. “What still makes America great” is perhaps the more pertinent question. Yet what’s really getting McAvoy’s fluff up, apparently, is not his country, but the media, and its inability to extract truthful, lively discussion from its populace and its leaders.

The rest of the episode takes us behind the scenes at ACN, a fictional cable news network where McAvoy’s staff has been poached because he’s such a prickly, cynical bastard. And the one person who apparently has caused his world to cave in just might be the one who can restore him: MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), an old flame from a bad breakup who’s burnt out from covering Afghanistan and Iraq for years, and is brought in to executive-produce McAvoy’s pallid show.

You can’t handle the truth: Emily Morimer is MacKenzie McHale, a war-seasoned journalist called in to executive produce McAvoy’s show.

Naturally, McAvoy is against it. The two engage in head-to-head exchanges in which they rattle off more words per minute than most humans do in a couple of hours. (Sample machine-gun dialogue: “You’re spinning out of control, terrified that you’re losing your audience and you’ll do anything to get them back. You’re one pitch meeting away from doing the news in 3D.”) That’s Sorkin’s forte, of course: having characters spar with words, throwing off shards of wit that few humans can actually muster in the heat of argument. Unfortunately, the dialogue often comes across as forced, scripted, and often several mouthfuls too many for most actors. (Even Daniels admits he had a tough time with all the Sorkinese: “Sometimes, you are drowning in Sorkin, you only just have your head above water and you’re doing all you can to keep on top of it.”) Do people really talk like this, off the page? Maybe not. But it does make for entertaining television.

To a point. The young characters on the show — obviously written in to appeal to young viewers — are kind of annoyingly self-referential and full of Gen Y lingo. This is to make The Newsroom more palatable to kids who lurrrved The Social Network, apparently. Meanwhile it turns out McAvoy’s meltdown — which he officially blames on “vertigo medicine” — was actually caused by seeing his ex-wife in the studio audience, holding up a sign that reads: “It’s not… but it can be.” Is it a sign that his relationship can be revived? Or a clarion call to make his TV show — and his country — better? Did he hallucinate this call to greatness? Or was she really there? You’ll find out in the first episode of The Newsroom.

Daniels and Mortimer are fine as the seasoned news team. Though they lack the screwball spark of Tracy and Hepburn, they do have some energetic exchanges. The vibe often does recall Broadcast News, particularly the intricacies of getting updated info on the air as quickly as possible, often through headphones. Sam Waterston is also on form as ACN president Charlie Skinner, a bowtie-wearing, hard-drinking newshound. And don’t miss the vocal cameo by Jessie Eisenberg as a nervous oil rig inspector from the government-hired Mineral Management Services. You can practically see the sweat beads form on his forehead.

Do you speak Sorkinese?: Aaron Sorkin, creator of HBO’s The Newsroom, on the set.

Being in the news biz myself (well, to the extent that “Lifestyle” is considered “news”), I was curious about how accurate The Newsroom would be. Sorkin is up to date on the issues — the dumbing down of news coverage, the competition with other media — though the main news story in the show’s opener comes from a few years back: the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The bulk of the opening 75-minute episode concerns how ACN tracks down the facts and returns to a semblance of being a “hard news” operation. I’ll admit, by the end I wanted to see these guys break more stories.

“Reclaiming the Fourth Estate! Reclaiming journalism as an honorable profession! Speaking the truth to ‘stupid’!” MacKenzie blusters, rallying the troops.

If only stupid would listen.

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HBO’s The Newsroom premieres tonight in the Philippines, 9 p.m.