ONTD

The critics hate it.

The Newsroom (10 p.m. Sundays on HBO Canada), that is, Aaron Sorkin’s latest attempt to inject a marketable TV drama with meaningful dialogue about what’s wrong with the world today.

They not only hate it, frankly, they loathe it, with a visceral revulsion that comes through in their condescending dismissals of the show as “monstrously conceived and incompetently executed” (Glenn Garvin), “manipulative and shrieky” (Maureen Ryan) and “choking on its own sanctimony” (Alessandra Stanley).

It’s an “epochal failure,’’ continues The Miami Herald’s Garvin in one of the most scathing takedowns, frankly, I’ve ever read. “A program destined for television’s all-time What Were They Thinking? list.

“Not since NASA’s first Vanguard rocket blew up on its launch pad in 1957 will Americans have seen anything crash and burn on television with such hellish spectacularity.’’


It’s all right there on metacritic.com, where the show — about an upstart cable channel that decides to stop pandering for ratings and deliver the news in a responsible way — received a middling 57 per cent rating from 31 scribes in the kind of massive pile-on one might expect for a crass sitcom or brain-dead reality show.

The Newsroom, on the other hand, is a prestige cable series created by an Oscar and Emmy winning screenwriter (Sorkin) that presumes to bridge the gap between intelligent commentary and populist entertainment.

A nighttime soap with brains.

What I find particularly intriguing is that the level of outrage is so out of proportion to the show’s alleged sins: it’s talky, preachy, condescending, chauvinistic, cheesy, politically slanted and has no basis in reality.

Sheesh. What really boils their blood, I’m guessing, is that it dares to have an opinion, and its opinion is this: the media is lazy, gullible and stupid, and in terms of TV news, has abandoned ethics and accountability in a frantic bid for, gulp, ratings.

“I was an accomplice to a slow and repeated and unacknowledged and unamended train wreck of failures,’’ orates the repentant chief anchor (Jeff Daniels) in an on-air apology that rings with Sorkin’s trademark bluster or passion, depending on your point of view.

“I’m a leader in an industry that miscalled election results, hyped up terror scares, ginned up controversy and failed to report on tectonic shifts in our country, from the collapse of the financial system to the truths about how strong we are to the dangers we actually face.

“I’m a leader in an industry that misdirected your attention with the dexterity of Harry Houdini, while sending hundreds of thousands of our bravest young men and women off to war without due diligence.”

I’m not saying I agree, though the show has plenty of staunch defenders.

But it’s Sorkin’s opinion, articulately conveyed, and despite the critical slams, that hit home with enough viewers to make The Newsroom a bona fide cable hit, already renewed for a second season.

More telling is that despite a tiny audience of two million — about the same, ironically, as critical darlings Mad Men and Breaking Bad — it’s sparked such heated debate, which speaks to Sorkin’s ability to seize on a cultural moment and squeeze it for maximum impact.

He’s done this before, of course, with The West Wing, a Clinton-era valentine that painted politicians as principled do-gooders, and The Social Network, the 2010 film that captured the cynical undertone of the Facebook generation and won him an Oscar.

But The Newsroom is angrier, more direct, touched — in this U.S. election year — by what feels like a sense of historic inevitability.

Never mind his much maligned preachiness, his Quixotic determination “to speak truth to stupid.”

Sorkin, it’s clear, is an idealist, and it’s his unapologetic desire to effect wholesale change that infuriates some, emboldens others, and ultimately serves as a revealing Rorschach test for viewers.

“Obviously, you’d prefer that the praise for the show be unanimous,” the defiant TV pariah told critics at the recent TV press tour in Los Angeles.

“But I think any time people are talking this much about a television show, it’s good for television.’’

What his more ardent critics fail to recognize as they froth indignantly about the show’s “sermonizing diatribes” is that, by and large, people view critics the same way Sorkin views newscasters — as elitist, out-of-touch culture snobs, opinionated blowhards huffing and puffing in a way that seems defiantly self-serving.

“I love the show,” posits online commentator Retox. “Especially now that I know it bugs ‘real-life’ reporters.’’

Agrees Brandyn: “I don’t care that the show isn’t realistic to what a ‘real’ newsroom is like. It’s what I wish a real newsroom was like.”

Even Canadian anchor Peter Mansbridge — almost alone among his peers — has weighed in on the side of common sense, noting in a CBC blog the misguidedness of criticizing a TV show because it doesn’t meet professional standards of realism.

“To me, it’s what it’s supposed to be — entertainment,” he notes plainly. “And quite frankly, I’m not minding the blunt hammer it uses in decrying the state of U.S. cable news.”

Does the show have flaws? Sure, but no one expects CSI: Crime Scene Investigation to follow real-life forensics or Grey’s Anatomy to slavishly mimic hospital protocol.

What this is really about is engaging an audience — prodding, provoking and challenging them, without making them cringe.

Or worse, turning the channel.


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Yes, people hate this show because Sorkin is just too damn good and noble and smart for the masses to wrap their minds around. Please. Kiss Sorkin's ass more. I dare you.