The Newsreader - 1989

 

 "I just feel working together, you know, you me and the story, that was the happiest time of my life."

There is a moment in The Newsreader’s final episode of the third season, titled The Fall, that will haunt me for a while. Dale Jennings, who has spent the season torturing himself by listening to the increasingly cruel viewer messages, has finally broken down. He shows up for the nightly news drunk, dishevelled. He gives a performance in front of the camera that is an act of sheer self-destruction: mocking himself, reflecting all those messages about his lack of ease, his inability to be a regular bloke, his robotic tone of voice and facial expressions. It’s a broadcasted breakdown, a horrifying performance of a man who has been broken in the world that he lives in, and by the ambitions he had for himself. It’s a cry for help – it’s so clear that he needs to be supported and cared for, but instead, his boss – Lindsay (William McInnes), who finally ascends to full villain status here instead of caricature of a high blood-pressure, low-functioning alcoholic propped up by old boys networks – uses the opportunity for further beat down on him. Dale, fed up by his antics, has tried to have him removed, and the ploy has failed, leaving Lindsay to seek revenge. He’s blackmailed him with all the stories he’s bought up and buried that show Dale’s relationships with other men. He’s repeated the taunts of the dissatisfied viewers, mocked his style of delivery, that we know he has worked so hard for, that is the result of him trying to eradicate any perceived weakness or softness. In this moment, where Dale seems to be at the brink of complete self-annihilation, Lindsay looms over him in front of the make-up mirror like some kind of devil, mocking him further, playing into all the self-destructive thoughts that he already has about himself. He wants to annihilate, dominate completely. He puts his heavy hands on his shoulders. In this moment, Lindsay personifies all the horrible traits that The Newsreader has spent three seasons portraying: a sexist, racist, homophobic man who cannot be removed from his position of power because he drinks and plays golf with the boss, who will do everything he can to prevent change. If The Newsreader is a portrait of Australia – maybe limited in scope to the late Eighties, but these histories have branches well into 2025 – then Lindsay is a culmination of the worst parts of it, a stubborn dam that stands in the way of change and progress toward something better. For Dale, he represents personal ruin with his vindictiveness, his instinctual hatred of everything that Dale is as a person.

This is a season of extraordinary performances by everyone, but Sam Reid manages something that is truly magnificent. He captures what happens to a person who is trying hard to become someone else, someone more accepted and palatable. He denies himself, but this self-abnegation has physical and mental consequences. The more desperate he gets as he internalises the feedback, seemingly willingly torturing himself with only the worst parts of it, the more his bottled-up desperation and grief becomes obvious in his body: tight, contained in the way that all the bits of himself he’s pushed down seem to dent the surface. Reid’s physical acting is a feat: the way he holds himself, the way his voice becomes stranger and stranger in his broadcasts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more accurate or difficult-to-watch showcase of what homophobia does. His performance is all the more impressive in contrast to what he does with Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, who could not be more different from Dale.
It's even more effective because she show frequently takes Dale out of that environment and into one where he can be himself: Helen knows him, and loves him unconditionally. In this third season, as much as they should be in professional competition now that their shows air at the same time, The Newsreader has deliberately decided that they would not be separated, that they would deliberately and consciously prioritise their friendship. In the past, the tension has been between what they wanted and needed from each other, but now all the pressure is coming from the outside, and their (now only platonic) love for each other is something that nothing can undermine or kill anymore. With Helen, Dale is warm, comforting and comforted – the tension leaves his body, the burden of performance is lifted. This season could have been about what happens when their individual ambitions clash, with Helen despairing when she realises that the network she now works for (a fictionalised version of Channel Seven) has decided to pit her against her old workplace. Instead, the season is all about how Dale can free himself and become the person he is with Helen in other contexts, and if that is at all possible while working in broadcasting.

Helen (Anna Torv once again doing her best work, even though her whole career is made up of great performances) is in a seemingly more precarious situation at the beginning of the season. Dale wins the Gold Logie, Australia’s greatest television award. Helen is only nominated for and loses an award, after skilfully and painstakingly saving her career with her work as a foreign correspondent (we see her covering the Lockerbie disaster at the beginning of the series). Her new gig is a nightly Public Affairs show – clearly work that suits her more, with a journalistic focus on deeper storytelling – but going up against the number one rated show is a gamble, and one that takes a while to pay off. Not unlike her old workplace, she once again has to negotiate between her keen instincts for a good story and the requests of a network that only cares about the numbers, and is hesitant to take any further risks. She finally seeks psychological help for her inability to manage her emotions – the scenes between her and her therapist are some of my favourites this season – but it also comes with the shock of being diagnosed as borderline, when all she wants is a medication or treatment that will fix her. Instead, the therapist provides tools she can use, and Helen grudgingly finds them useful. Her show becomes successful when she trusts her instincts – but it’s Noelene (Michelle Lim Davidson) who is the true catalyst for change this season, who shines. Last season, she was asked to choose between working for Helen and marrying Rob, a decision that she knew would likely lead to an eventual end to her career. Lindsay doesn’t give her maternity leave, so once she gives birth, she loses her job – but she still proves to be the once character with the best instinct for a developing story, and the impressive rolodex of contacts to pursue them. Tim from Camera has been working for a different channel in China, but with the outbreak of the student revolts 1989, his press credentials have been revoked. He returns to Australia with his partner (professionally and privately) to ask his former network to send him back there, knowing that the revolts are likely to erupt soon into one of the big stories of the decade. Lindsay doesn’t see the potential, because if he was ever good at what he does, his time has long passed. Noelene takes the story to Helen, who hires her as a producer on her new show. A few weeks later, she is the only one with exclusive footage from the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

There is a really interesting and considered way in which the personal themes of the season align with the general political environment of the late 1980s, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. All these stories they are covering are about a clash of new ideas and demands against regimes eager to suppress them, and in telling them, the journalists themselves are up against conservative networks unwilling to support them. Their personal ambitions – especially Noelene’s (and Dennis’, back at Dale’s workplace), come up against the implicit racism of their environment, where their vision and ability is not being taken seriously.  

There is more of an arc to the news stories in this season, more coherence maybe specifically because there is a clear arc towards the end of the USSR and the lead up to it. These world events and who has the better coverage of them determines the ratings, but the quieter moments of the season are more resonant: Helen’s story about mental hospitals, when she reckons with her own history and ends in a surprisingly emotional appeal for more empathy, right after she herself has been terrorised by the press by a leaked story that Lindsay was all-too-willing to plant out of his personal hatred for her, Evelyn Walker’s meddling after the passing of her husband that ends in a satisfying and effective take-down of Lindsay whose hubris doesn’t allow him to take her seriously, her daughter’s relationship to Dale and the false allyship of someone who thinks that the answer to his existential struggle is to frame his bisexuality as a personal defect to overcome – these are all more quiet beats throughout the season that hit hard. One of the most eloquent storylines is only one episode, following last season’s about the protests during the Bicentennial: Once again, Helen is approached by activist Lynus (Hunter Page-Lochard) with a story about an Aboriginal former VFL player who quit the game because of racism. The story would be a response to sport reporter Rob’s (Stephen Peacocke) claim that there is no racism, only brotherhood, in Australian sport, and his flubbed reaction to an Australian rugby team intending to play in South Africa in spite of the apartheid boycott. Like last season, the story is cut – because footy is the “crown jewel” of Channel 7 and footy is like a religion in Australia, because the white protagonists on the show, even when they’re outwardly sympathetic, won’t risk anything for stories about Australian racism and First Nations people – and because Helen’s poor information control retraumatises the player willing to talk, showing how little she considers his well-being. When Rob meets his former fellow player in a bar, he explains to him what it was like to be taunted by racist fans without any support from his white “mates” (the story echoes that of legendary player Nicky Winmar, but there are several examples from just the last ten years), and how empty Rob’s claim of brotherhood is. While the show covers world-changing events that changed the course of history, nothing much has changed for First Nations people in Australia since the late Eighties.

At the end of the season, Helen is confronted by Noelene about her unwillingness to extend the privilege she enjoys to advocate for colleagues who aren’t male and white. Instead of advocating for Dale to get a producer spot on her team after his breakdown and firing, she uplifts Noelene: and Dale, freed from the pressure, finally free from the anvil over his head, reports from Berlin after the Fall of the wall: a different man, figuring out who he is, visibly happy.

2021-, created by Michael Lucas, starring Anna Torv, Sam Reid, Michelle Lim Davidson, William McInnes, Chum Ehelepola, William McInnes, Marg Downey, Stephen Peacocke, Maria Angelico, Philippa Northeast, Chai Hansen.