Screen Australia provided production funding for season 1 but not season 2. VicScreen provided funding for both seasons.
Episode 6 - Season Final
Sunday 15 October 8.30pm
As Dale hosts one of the longest and most elaborate broadcasts of the decade— full coverage of Australia Day 1988— both he and Helen hit personal and professional cross-roads.
It’s the biggest television event of the year, possibly the decade— Australia Day 1988, featuring a full re-enactment of the first fleet sailing into Sydney Harbour, ceremonies with Prince Charles and Princess Diana… and one of the biggest protests ever seen in Australia.
Amidst this, all our characters are hitting personal and professional cross-roads… Helen (Anna Torv) and Dale (Sam Reid) are under severe pressure to clarify their personal status to the world. But what to say? When Helen is offered a lucrative, dream contract to be an investigative reporter overseas, it only intensifies the urgency.
Considering how well it has done overseas as well will surely back another season (if it continues to)
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With every episode of season two now on iView, the companion podcast with Leigh and Lisa also has all six episodes available on ABC Listen app and ABC website.
S2, E6 - Channel 7 now exists as a rival network. Even shows the old 1987 station logo.
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Watched the season finale at last today. Was a cracking series. I’ll avoid spoilers until the end of the series is publicly available but the character development in Dale as a presenter is amazing. Considering how he botched that first update in the first episode to the face of News at 6! Well done!!
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Season 3
A third season has received funding from Screen Australia:
The Newsreader season 3 : A six-part third instalment of the ABC series that digs behind the indelible images of the 1980s for a compelling, intimate, vital look at an era of great change. From The Newsreader season 2 is returning team, director/executive producer Emma Freeman, writer/producer Michael Lucas, writers Niki Aken and Adrian Russell Wills, producer/executive producer Joanna Werner and executive producer Stuart Menzies. Season 3 is also written by Christine Bartlett (Five Bedrooms). It has received major production investment from the ABC in association with VicScreen. International sales are managed by eOne.
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Fantastic news. I very much enjoyed S2 (as much as S1). The ending of Ep 5 had me watching Ep 6 straight away, even though I had planned to stretch it out a bit! I couldn’t turn it off.
I am also happy that there will be a third season. The first two seasons have been great. It will be rounding down the 1980’s, id assume.
Great news.
Creator Michael Lucas said in a previous interview that if there was to be a third season, it would touch on major incidents which happened in 1989, such as Tiananmen Square massacre in China. It remains a very sensitive topic to this day, so Michael and his production team will need to treat it carefully.
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I’d love a 4th season that jumps into the 90s!
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I wouldn’t be surprised if we see 4 seasons.
There is a big appetite for this show. Well done to all involved.
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So glad to see a 3rd season is coming. To be honest I enjoyed season 2 more than I did the first season!
Like others have mentioned, the growth and character development of Dale is so well done.
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Will it go into the 90s?
Best show on TV at present. Much better than Morning Wars IMO.
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ABC talked to current newsreaders about 1980s/90s newsrooms.
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I saw the last episode of S2 last night (no spoilers).
Good series again. Though I may need to rewatch one or two eps because a few details mentioned in the last episode that didn’t entirely make sense to me but I gather I might have missed something in an earlier ep.
I understand that some obvious licence is taken with depicting that sort of environment but one thing I find, and it’s not unique to this show, is that the actors don’t portray an accurate picture of actually reading the news. Real life newsreaders are not quite so robotic in their delivery and I get they perhaps are consciously slowing down their delivery for dramatic effect. But it just strikes me as portraying how actors think newsreaders read the news, not how they actually do. The Geoff Walters character is almost comatose in his delivery.
Look at some of our real life newsreaders or current affairs presenters from the time and their words flow a lot more naturally, not like “good evening… this. is. Helen. Norville. here. i am. reading. the. news.” I don’t know, maybe it’s a deliberate creative choice in making the series but it sort of bugs me a bit.
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That seems to be the case with some other aspects of how news is portrayed on the show as well. Some of it seems to be from a 2023 perspective or how they think the news might have been presented at the time. Things like breaking into programming with news and rolling coverage that I’ve seen don’t look authentic.
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I would say from a media perspective it’s accurate to a certain point. But we all have to keep in mind it’s made for entertainment and for a 2023 audience to follow. This isn’t a documentary. But the creators have captured a large portion of what it was like working in a commercial newsroom in 1988.
Looking forward to season 3 and to the year 1989.
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