Quite possibly one of the amazingly best shows on television, right from the 1st episode, when Will McAvoy, played by a curmudgeonly Jeff Daniels, launches into a justifiably righteous tirade, that arguably takes his character, and those around him into a vicious tailspin of sorts, this series, written powerfully, and executed even with more vigor than I'd have thought possible, never rests, and takes us from one powerful sequence to the next with breakneck pace, and those among us starved for quality storytelling and in for the ride from start to finish.
While Season 1 deals with how the main characters have an arc of sorts, having known 1 another before, and relating to each other differently now they know the other in completely altered circumstances, it, like the subsequent seasons, intersperses live footage of true political events in the world's pop culture, with fictitious amounts of what each of the main leads does, to deal with those revenue in a way befitting an almost legitimate news channel, while skirting an on- the-nose preachy tone about the responsibilities of doing something like News night, every night.
Like its subsequent seasons, it also provides a fantastic/fascinating insight into what goes behind how the news is delivered to us on TV, and, if that weren't enough, it gleefully puts our lead characters through the blender more often than not, and we cannot flinch away after.
Make no mistake though, it's not all perfect. When dealing with the open threads of relationships that the leads find themselves in, it takes so many missteps and falters so many times that it even becomes intended comedy, and a self parody of sorts, even venturing, surprisingly into vaudeville territory, that thankfully never detracts from the main tale in play.
All the technical departments, including the production design, Thomas Newman's score, the camera-work, the cinematography, all fall over each other in the telling of this tale, but make no mistake, this is one of the finest examples where the written content lords over everything else.
While Season 1 deals with how the main characters have an arc of sorts, having known 1 another before, and relating to each other differently now they know the other in completely altered circumstances, it, like the subsequent seasons, intersperses live footage of true political events in the world's pop culture, with fictitious amounts of what each of the main leads does, to deal with those revenue in a way befitting an almost legitimate news channel, while skirting an on- the-nose preachy tone about the responsibilities of doing something like News night, every night.
Like its subsequent seasons, it also provides a fantastic/fascinating insight into what goes behind how the news is delivered to us on TV, and, if that weren't enough, it gleefully puts our lead characters through the blender more often than not, and we cannot flinch away after.
Make no mistake though, it's not all perfect. When dealing with the open threads of relationships that the leads find themselves in, it takes so many missteps and falters so many times that it even becomes intended comedy, and a self parody of sorts, even venturing, surprisingly into vaudeville territory, that thankfully never detracts from the main tale in play.
All the technical departments, including the production design, Thomas Newman's score, the camera-work, the cinematography, all fall over each other in the telling of this tale, but make no mistake, this is one of the finest examples where the written content lords over everything else.