The Newsroom, Series 2

So tonight I watched the last two episodes of the latest series of The Newsroom (and hopefully not the LAST series, despite there being no apparent news as to whether it has been reviewed or not) and I have to admit, I don’t think I have seen anything more spectacular than those two hours of television.

Aaorn Sorkin has always shown the ability to write incredibly good drama, but even after some of the comedy in The West Wing I really had no clue just how good he was at writing deadpan comedy.

The first five minutes of Election Night (with Will, Rebecca and Charlie) were amazing and had me laughing out loud a lot, but when it came to Reese and his explanation of why he couldn’t do what he wanted (when he and Charlie were discussing what should happen before the morning after) I really burst out laughing and had to actually pause the recording – I didn’t want to miss anything, but I could just not stop gigging at not only Reese’s line, but his delivery of it as well.

And much to my surprise, it only got better as the episodes went on.

Five of the first six episodes were a bit "Meh", because they were mostly leading up to the seventh episode. The one exception was "Unintended Consequences" and that was mostly because of Maggie and Gary Cooper, although the persistent attempts to get the name from the OWS girl were pretty hilarious (which just offset the Uganda story).

But once they hit the seventh episode, and followed it up with the two part election special, it pretty much blew last series away – even 5/1 which was truly excellent.

So – yeah. Hopefully they will continue it, and continue the high standards. Because while there were one or two episodes of The West Wing that were a bit "huh?" or "meh" or "WTF WAS THAT?" I think they were either set after "Twenty Five" (or, to put it another way, after Sorkin’s departure) or were very early on. And of the nineteen episodes of this show, there haven’t been any I’ve disliked, and only a few that seemed to lack the pazaz I would expect. Which is not bad going.