What you should know about Anna Torv’s award-winning role in ‘The Newsreader’
nypost.comRoku.The series, set in 1986 Australia, stars Anna Torv (“Fringe,” “Mindhunter”) as Helen Norville, the tempestuous co-anchor of the “News at Six” in Melbourne alongside her aging, jealous colleague, Geoff Walters (Robert Taylor), who’s turning 60 and clings to his days as a Vietnam War correspondent to assert his relevance.
He knows (but won’t admit it) that viewers are tuning in to the newscast for Helen; their on-camera smiles disguise the icy off-camera friction between.The “News at Six” team also includes young, fresh-faced producer/reporter Dale Jennings (Sam Reid), who’s hoping for his big break as a newsreader and snaring that all-important morning “update” segment — but muffs it, big-time, when he fills in for Helen after she storms out of the station following a loud fight with her boss, news chief Lindsay Cunningham (William McInnes) — after he calls her “a war zone on two legs” and says she has “a face like a slapped a–.” He knows that Helen is the network news division’s bread-and-butter and he tells her as much … in his own un-PC way.
Such was life in the go-go newsrooms of the mid-’80s.“The Newsreader” opens in January 1986 and constructs its narrative around two real-life, major news events: the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, which killed all seven crew members (including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe), and the arrival of Halley’s Comet, making its once-every-75-years appearance.
As the series progresses, so does the relationship between Helen and Dale — she believes in his talent and he becomes her producer after she returns to “News at Six.” Dale is in awe of Helen while she struggles for the respect she deserves — and is so often denied — and is able to remarkably pull it together for the camera.
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