The first season of ABC’s engrossing period drama The Newsreader created a vivid depiction of an Australian TV newsroom from the 1980s via two thoroughly appealing lead characters: Anna Torv’s Helen Norville and Sam Reid’s Dale Jennings. The former is the big-name presenter, headstrong and high-hatted, the latter an ambitious but kinda dorky newcomer whose star is on the rise. The will-they-won’t-they romantic tension between them resulted, as viewers will recall, very much in “they did”. But Helen and Dale’s relationship is just one foundational aspect: important but not a crux upon which the show rests.
That newsroom setting is the central, unifying element, not just a space for drama but a means to approach history from an interesting perspective: not in the thick of it, but not entirely detached. Events bubbling away in the background of the first season included the release of Lindy Chamberlain from prison and the bombing of Melbourne’s Russell Street police headquarters. The second series – with returning creator Michael Lucas and director Emma Freeman – begins with the 1987 federal election looming.
