With the departure of “Boardwalk Empire” and Nucky Thompson’s brutal passage into the iconography of a television character for the ages, Sunday nights are about to get very interesting again on HBO.
The pay cabler is about to launch the third and final season of its drama “The Newsroom,” followed by the comedy comeback of “The Comeback,” which ran for one season nearly ten years ago.
The first episodes of both shows were premiered in Los Angeles this week, and for “The Newsroom, it was a bittersweet but festive sendoff Tuesday night at the Directors Guild of America Theater.
Created by Aaron Sorkin, who is currently writing the screenplay for a Steve Jobs biopic, the show– which has also served as a lightning rod for controversy about its politics– goes beyond the headlines as it follows the anchors, reporters, researchers and producers of a fictional national news network akin to CNN.
Jeff Daniels won the Emmy for portraying the lead anchorman of ACN, Will McAvoy, and as we left the polemical newscaster last season he seemed to be getting his personal life under control by finally proposing to his executive producer and former girlfriend, played by Emily Mortimer.
HBO president of programming Michael Lombardo introduced the first episode of the new season before an audience which included most of the show’s cast including Daniels, Sam Waterston, Olivia Munn, Dev Patel, Grace Gummer and Alison Pill.
“Of all the dramas on television, it’s the only show that examine social issues–and this final season is nothing short of magnificent,” he said, before bringing Sorkin to the stage.
“HBO has been a fantastic home and more than supportive,” said Sorkin, who reflected on the fact that he first saw Waterston on Broadway in “Much Ado about Nothing” in the 1970s. “I saw him as an acting god then, and now after working with him, I see him that way more than ever.” He also praised the other actors and his co-executive producers, who include Scott Rudin and Alan Poul.
Waterston told me later that the time Sorkin referred to was his breakout year as an actor and that he performed the Shakespearean play then on Broadway, in Central Park and on television as well– but naturally didn’t meet Sorkin, who was a pre-teen at the time.
Without any spoilers, the first episode of “The Newsroom” is set against the backdrop of the Boston Marathon bombings last year, from the chaotic, confusing first moments of the explosion to the dramatic events that led to the death of one of the suspects and the arrest of the other.
Reminiscent of the Edward Snowden scandal, one of the subplots involves stolen classified government documents that are handed over to Patel’s character, the newsroom’s scrappy IT pro who keeps everyone on top of tech advances and social media but knows and cares little about traditional journalism.
Another involves the potential hostile takeover of the network, and hints at the impending arrival of hard-partying, ultra-wealthy half-siblings of Chris Messina’s character, twins who are about to celebrate their 25th birthday and could conceivably gain control of the network and all of its employees. (Any similarity to Murdoch spawn would probably be officially denied.)
All the while, throughout the regular interruptions of breaking news, the often strange alliances and unlikely romances, the show takes a hard look at the core issue of maintaining journalistic integrity in the era of 24-hour news cycles and citizen journalism resulting in the dissemination of misinformation—such as what happened in the search for the Boston bombing suspects.
By contrast, “The Comeback” skewers reality television and its evolution over the past decade through the eyes of the egocentric actress Valerie Cherish as portrayed by Lisa Kudrow, who desperately wants back into the game.
Created and executive produced by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King–HBO royalty going back to his time with the seminal comedy “Sex and the City”—“The Comeback” picks up nine years after it left off with Kudrow hiring a student film crew to shoot her every move. She even has a camera set up in her bedroom, much to her husband’s displeasure. Her game plan is to then edit the footage into a presentable package to get her on Bravo, after she apparently had an earlier falling out with the cable network’s Andy Cohen.
The first two episodes were screened Wednesday night at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre, with Lombardo, King and Kudrow intro-ing them and setting the stage for the comedy to come, which includes a Chateau Marmont encounter with Cohen, who’s lunching with RuPaul. Lisa Vanderpump also has a cameo in another funny lunch scene at Villa Blanca relating to the Bravo thread of the story.
Fans who were drawn to the comedy in 2005—which had a cult following that’s grown over the years– and plenty of new ones are sure to be won over by Kudrow’s character, who is equal parts pragmatist, snake, unaware of her own limitations and so vain she always has her hairdresser in tow. In fact, they have a line of unsold hair products for redheads stored in a warehouse, in case anything Valerie ever does on TV takes off and spurs sales. Because her earlier promotional campaign for it completely bombed.
Valerie’s trademark red tresses are being constantly fussed with as she navigates her renewed road to fame, which this time involves a huge step up in the showbiz food chain: working on an HBO show with a longtime foil, writer and show creator, Paulie G., who’s written a program that portrays a character just like Valerie Cherish—try Mallory Church—in a very unflattering light.
After briefly considering a lawsuit, Valerie realizes being part of an HBO show– no matter how negative the characterization—is a game-changer in seeking the spotlight. So there you have it, without any spoilers, an HBO show within an HBO show. It’s inside baseball stuff that audiences will greatly enjoy—and it left the premiere audience, many of whom work at the company, in roar-out-loud laughter.
Like Paulie G., played by Lance Barber, many of the original characters have returned. “We were still writing the episodes when people started discovering that there was going to be more of ‘The Comeback,’” Kudrow said in an interview. “Initially we reached out to some people, and then we were hearing from others. We knew we would be able to have them all in every episode, but we were hearing people say, ‘I want to be part of it.’ So we moved our production schedules around, and they moved their movable schedules around to make it work. It was great.”
As for whether Valerie Cherish or any other characters have changed much in nine years, Kudrow says they will be tested in this new season. “Everyone thinks their priorities are straight, although I’m not sure Valerie ever says her priorities have changed, so that’s pretty honest. At first, she seemed a little crankier to me. Michael and I talked about her character and how she might have changed. But as we kept going, we did find that person who’s so optimistic, who spins everything into, ‘That’s okay, because …’ And that’s Valerie.”
(“The Newsroom” debuts on HBO Sunday November 9 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO, followed by “The Comeback” at 10 p.m. ET/PT.)
–Hillary Atkin
