Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five titles and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.
---
This week's Thursday Movie Picks is TMP Television Edition - Journalism [Suggested by Getter]
---
This week's theme is a suggestion by Getter. Well this is quite easy. I happen to have seen a couple of TV series featuring journalism in the past year.
The Newsroom (2012 - 2014)
Follows a news team as they bring in a new producer and make changes to their show.
I saw the first season of this way back in 2012 and have only just
completed the other seasons this year. This is created by Sorkin so the
characters do a lot of fast talking with a lot of big words thrown it;
there's lots of banter and arguments so that's entertaining and I
overall enjoyed it. But it gets heavy handed with whatever message it
wants to deliver and very preachy about journalism.
Sharp Objects (2018)
A reporter goes back to her hometown to cover the murder of two preteen girls and to also confront her past. I've picked this before for book to TV adaptations and it's here again because it fits so well and because I really like it. This very dark disturbing tale is a very good crime drama.
A reporter goes back to her hometown to cover the murder of two preteen girls and to also confront her past. I've picked this before for book to TV adaptations and it's here again because it fits so well and because I really like it. This very dark disturbing tale is a very good crime drama.
The Morning Show (2019 - )
Follows the lives of the people who bring the The Morning Show. I don't really consider those morning shows as "journalism". I mean the shows tend to be very light and puffy, they have like cooking segments and gift guides or whatever. Anyway I suppose that is what the The Morning Show in this series is trying to change by bringing a new host, a reporter who was used to do more journalistic reporting which just creates drama with all the other hosts as they fight for the spotlight. Anyway this series is great. Love the workplace drama and it also has a hot issue as part of the story line and does it well I think. Can't wait for the second season.
Home Before Dark (2020 - )
A young girl and her family moves back to her father's childhood home in a small town after he loses his newspaper job in the city. An aspiring journalist herself, she starts her own newspaper and begins to dig into the unsolved case of her father's still missing best friend who had been abducted as a child. This was surprisingly good. It was clearly made for tweens and teens in mind but still good for adults...sorta like a Pixar movie, it manages the right amount of darkness and heartbreak while still being PG. The young lead actress was very good, though I think they should drop the friends characters, who weren't good enough actors compared to her. Anyway this is what the new Nancy Drew TV series wants to be, an interesting atmospheric mystery. A mystery that is only partway solved in the first season so I'm glad Home Before Dark is getting a second season.
A young girl and her family moves back to her father's childhood home in a small town after he loses his newspaper job in the city. An aspiring journalist herself, she starts her own newspaper and begins to dig into the unsolved case of her father's still missing best friend who had been abducted as a child. This was surprisingly good. It was clearly made for tweens and teens in mind but still good for adults...sorta like a Pixar movie, it manages the right amount of darkness and heartbreak while still being PG. The young lead actress was very good, though I think they should drop the friends characters, who weren't good enough actors compared to her. Anyway this is what the new Nancy Drew TV series wants to be, an interesting atmospheric mystery. A mystery that is only partway solved in the first season so I'm glad Home Before Dark is getting a second season.
Borgen (2010 - 2013) (2022 - )
A Danish series following the lives of politicians, press advisers and political journalists. I had heard good reviews about Borgen around the same time as I had heard of The Killing and The Bridge (both Scandinavian crime dramas), and for some reason I had lumped them all together and assumed Borgen was going to be dark and gritty like The Killing and The Bridge...but the politics version...so something akin to House of Cards. It's not actually. It's more of a work place drama and it is very very good, I really enjoyed it. The journalism side of the series is also really interesting. We see the journalists putting up the shows and delivering news about new policies or bills that we had just seen the politicians working on in the scenes before that. Then later all the media and public reactions to it and the experts /pundits coming in to dissect it. The series ended at season 3, but it seemed it has been revived for a season 4 in 2022 which I am so glad about and hope recent events haven't disrupted its production.
---
If
you are participating be sure to add your blog post to the linky widget
below (Enter your Blog Post URL, your Blog Name and your email {which
will remain hidden}). Please also visit the other participating blogs,
spread the word about this series, and also link back to my blog on your
own Thursday Movie Picks post :)
---
Participating Blogs/Bloggers
Those first three are popular today! I haven't seen any of these though I have seen snippets of The Newsroom that involved Jane Fonda laying down the law as Leona Lansing.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see the rest of the series as well as The Morning Show but don't have access to the networks they're on. Home Before Dark sounds interesting too.
I chose three that deal with different aspects of journalism-print, TV news and newspapers- and then tried to find ways that they interconnect. The second two were easy because one character moved from one to the other but the first two share similar opening credits.
The Name of the Game (1968-1971)-Publisher Glenn Howard (Gene Barry), “People” magazine reporter Jeff Dillon (Anthony Franciosa) (before that publication existed) and editor of “Crime” Dan Farrell (Robert Stack) all work for magazine giant Howard Publications. Described as a “wheel” show at the time with the three main leads in rotating stories that dealt with everything from industrial espionage to fanatical hippies committing mass suicide to corruption in sports and everything in between. Though the men very occasionally appeared in one of the others episodes they were all tied together by Peggy Maxwell (Susan Saint James) the editorial assistant to each man. In the opening credits each star’s name would appear in small type and multiply until forming a portrait of each.
Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977)-For seven seasons Mary Tyler Moore turned the world on with her smile as the independent and single (a rarity at the time) Mary Richards, associate producer at WJM News in Minneapolis. She works for the gruff but good-hearted Lou Grant (Edward Asner) along with head writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), dim bulb anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) and two faced “Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White). Outside the newsroom she had a cozy efficiency apartment where best friend Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) and dizzy landlady Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) frequently popped in for chats and humor. Similar to the first show the star’s name appears as a single line in the credits before multiplying as the iconic theme song plays. You would need a truck for all the awards the show won.
Lou Grant (1977-1982)-After nearly the entire staff is fired from WJM Executive Producer Lou (Edward Asner) relocates to L.A. to become city editor for the Los Angeles Tribune newspaper. Aided by reporters Joe Rossi (Robert Walden) and Billie Newman (Linda Kelsey) and overseen by publisher Margaret Jones Pynchon (Nancy Marchand) they pursue topical stories each week. One of the rare shows where a character from a comedic show transferred to a dramatic one successfully (Asner won Emmys for both Best Dramatic Actor and Best Supporting Actor in a comedy). The show won 13 Emmys in total. The opening credits show the life cycle of a newspaper from a tree being felled through printing, delivery and finally a piece of it being used to line a canary’s cage!
Haven't seen any of your picks. The only one I've heard of is the Mary Tyler Moore Show but I didn't know the series premise.
DeleteThe Newsroom - you haven't seen it and yet know Jane Fonda's character's name? And she is only a minor character.
Every clip I saw of Jane Fonda from the show was always captioned "Jane Fonda as Leona Lansing" and I suppose I saw it so many times the name stuck in my head.
DeleteWe match on the first three picks! I'll have to check out Home Before Dark, I just got an Apple TV subscription so I've been checking out what's on there.
ReplyDeleteApple TV has some nice series. But it has so few titles, only carrying their own original shows, I'm not sure the cost is worth it(after my free subscription expires) even if it's cheaper than Netflix.
DeleteI haven’t seen any of these. Because I don’t have Netflix or other specialty channels but I heard about Sharp Objects and I wouldn’t mind givingHome Before Dark a try.
ReplyDeleteThat's too bad. Some of the best shows are now on those premium channels or streaming platforms.
DeleteI completely forgot to add my link to this but here it is if anyone is interested: https://mettelray.com/thursday-movie-picks-television-edition-journalism/
ReplyDeleteBut I mean we match on the first three so there's not a lot of variety this week. I still need to see Sharp Objects though.. despite the fact that I already included it in my list :D