The Newsroom, the latest Sorkin offering, premiered on HBO the other night, and the reviews haven’t been good. “Disappointing” and “preachy” are two words that have been bandied around a fair bit – the Radio Times says the Oscar-winning screenwriter has “forgotten to show rather than tell”, while the Guardian’s Michael Wolff lambasts Sorkin for dramatising a version of journalism that doesn’t even exist anymore.
However, if you’re a sucker for a Sorkin soliloquy, it’ll probably still push your buttons. That’s mainly because, as an excellent compilation video by one Kevin Porter (see below), shows, Sorkin is extremely repetitive when it comes to dialogue and plot arcs. A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Studio 60 and The Social Network, to name just a few, provide ample fodder for mashing together:
Will the fact that Sorkin seems to have about 10 favourite phrases that he uses to death make any difference to his latest show’s ratings? Probably not – a respectable 2.1m tuned in for the first episode of The Newsroom. Even the “critical spanking” (Daily Mail’s phrase) it received hasn’t turned people off. Turns out, being repetitive is no bad thing, if you’ve got clever words to repeat in the first place.
And the poor reviews? As Sorkin might say, that’s the cost of doing business.
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