Aaron Sorkin Will Soon Be Teaching Us About the News
HBO has announced that they've ordered Aaron Sorkin's cable news drama More As This Story Develops (only a tentative title — one they really should change) to series. In it Jeff Daniels plays a cable news anchor struggling to do the news in this internet-fast infotainment world.
So, great. Not only are we inundated 24 goddamned hours a day by cable bellowing dressed up as fact reporting, but now we are getting the same thing in our scripted television too. Only with more walking while talking! The only hope for this show to not become a self-serious chore is if it's more snappy-smart like early West Wing than earnest-preachy like Sorkin's disastrous Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip ("He's in AFGHANISTAN!!!!").
And, hey, the cast is pretty good. Jeff Daniels plays the anchor, Emily Mortimer is his new producer, and theater's John Gallagher Jr., Allison Pill, and Thomas Sadowski play members of the staff. (As does Olivia Munn, but the less said of that the better.) Plus there's Slumdog chaiwala Dev Patel, Tara from True Blood's drunken mom Adina Porter, and old sock puppet cum robot insurance salesman Sam Waterston as everyone's boss. That's a good crew.
So don't let them, or us, down, Sorkin! We want to see an in-the-trenches muckraker about how cable news is shitty. We don't want something totally can-do and soul stirring. But come on, there's no way he'd make the latter kind of show, right? Sure Keith Olbermann is involved, but that's minor. It's gonna be fiiiine. I mean, just read this description from the press release:
Together they set out on a patriotic and quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of corporate and commercial obstacles and their own personal entanglements.
Oh god.
[Photo via Getty]