Writer Mike Bartlett hit paydirt with the melodrama Doctor Foster. He now turns his attention to the press.
The first episode had a retro feel to it, it looked more like the newspaper industry from 20 years ago before Google News and Fake News left the press with diminishing circulation and extreme budget cuts where research is looking up Wikipedia. Even some of the stories featured in the opener such as a gay footballer killing himself seems more at home in the 1990s.
The series looks at the rivalry between The Post and The Herald. The former is a tabloid newspaper which is sensationalist and low brow. Its editor Duncan Allen (Ben Chaplin) being described as a charmless bully. The paper's boss tells him that The Post is losing money and wants better, more serious journalism even though it exposed a minister of hypocrisy and got her to resign.
The latter does engage in serious journalism and it looks like a dull place to work in. Everyone is so serious and po faced such as its news editor Holly Evans (Charlotte Riley) trying to locate CCTV footage of a hit and run accident from the editor of The Post as it involves the death of her flat mate from a speeding police car. The Herald too is losing money.
A perfunctory first episode but nothing that goes off the gates with a bang. I am left wondering whether I would bother to return for episode 2 though.
The first episode had a retro feel to it, it looked more like the newspaper industry from 20 years ago before Google News and Fake News left the press with diminishing circulation and extreme budget cuts where research is looking up Wikipedia. Even some of the stories featured in the opener such as a gay footballer killing himself seems more at home in the 1990s.
The series looks at the rivalry between The Post and The Herald. The former is a tabloid newspaper which is sensationalist and low brow. Its editor Duncan Allen (Ben Chaplin) being described as a charmless bully. The paper's boss tells him that The Post is losing money and wants better, more serious journalism even though it exposed a minister of hypocrisy and got her to resign.
The latter does engage in serious journalism and it looks like a dull place to work in. Everyone is so serious and po faced such as its news editor Holly Evans (Charlotte Riley) trying to locate CCTV footage of a hit and run accident from the editor of The Post as it involves the death of her flat mate from a speeding police car. The Herald too is losing money.
A perfunctory first episode but nothing that goes off the gates with a bang. I am left wondering whether I would bother to return for episode 2 though.
