WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Former political media consultant Roger Ailes (Russell Crowe) has just been fired from CNBC and is ready for a new challenge. Rupert Murdoch (veteran British actor, director and playwright Simon McBurney) has just the thing _ a cable news channel to challenge CNN. Ailes' idea is to essentially counterprogram the rest of the mainstream media with a conservative-leaning network, and the Fox News Channel is born Oct. 7, 1996. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ailes shifts FNC more sharply to the right, turning it into a bullhorn for President George W. Bush's call for a war in Iraq, then later, a battering ram against candidate Barack Obama, whom he instructs his anchors to refer to as "Barack Hussein Obama." Meanwhile, his private life: Ailes' wife, Beth (Sienna Miller), who tends to their vast estate in Garrison, New York, wants another challenge and her husband buys her one, a local newspaper. Ailes has also employed Laurie Luhn (Annabelle Wallis), whose only apparent job is to service his sexual desires. He later makes a fateful pass at Gretchen Carlson (Naomi Watts).
This short-run series is based on Gabriel Sherman's 2014 book, "The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News." It was adapted by Tom McCarthy, who won an Oscar for the screenplay of 2015's "Spotlight."
MY SAY: In the opening seconds of this seven-parter, Ailes _ presumably from the great beyond (he died in 2017 at 77) _ declares that he knows "what people are gonna say about" him after he's gone.
