The first series of The Newsreader premiered on ABC Television on 15 August 2021. Running for six episodes, the series was ABC's most-watched drama programme of the year, and the show received the most nominations of any show or film at the 2022 AACTA Awards.
The series was created and primarily written by Michael Lucas, and directed in its entirety by Emma Freeman. Set over the first four months of 1986, it charts the burgeoning relationship between a dominant female newsreader and a young male reporter, both utilising their unusual bond to disguise aspects of themselves that would severely hinder their careers in an era where bigotry, in multiple forms such as misogyny and homophobia, were pervasive in society, and in the newsroom that reports on it.
Two further series were broadcast in 2023 and 2025.
Cast Main Anna Torv, as Helen Norville Sam Reid, as Dale Jennings Robert Taylor, as Geoff Walters William McInnes, as Lindsay Cunningham Marg Downey, as Evelyn Walters Stephen Peacocke, as Rob Rickards Michelle Lim Davidson, as Noelene Kim Chum Ehelepola, as Dennis Tibb Chai Hansen, as Tim Ahern
Recurring Caroline Lee as, Jean Pascoe Maria Angelico, as Cheryl Ricci John Leary, as Murray Gallagher Jackson Tozer, as Ross McGrath Rhys Mitchell, as Brian Mathers Maude Davey, as Val Jennings Queenie van de Zandt, as Donna Gillies Bert La Bonté, as Gordon Dom Phelan, as Brett
Notable guests Robert Grubb, as Dr McCormack Tony Rickards, as Dr Shaw Tim Draxl, as Adam Edwina Wren, as Cathy Kaasik
Episodes
Release On 12 July 2021, the first trailer was released for the series. The series was broadcast on ABC, premiering on 15 August 2021. Alongside, and in the run-up to, the series' launch, the ABC released videos on YouTube and across social media interviewing cast and crew about the specific news events that would be covered in the series.
Entertainment One acquired international distribution rights to The Newsreader in late 2020, and has sold broadcast or streaming rights to the series to Arte in France and Germany, the BBC in the UK, Cosmo in Spain, Filmin in Portugal and Spain, NBCUniversal International Networks in Latin America, Now TV in Hong Kong, RTÉ in Ireland, The Roku Channel in the United States, Telus Presents in Canada, and Viaplay in Poland, the Netherlands and the Nordic and Baltic regions.
In Spain, the series premiered on 10 March 2022 on Cosmo, as part of their Women's Month programming, with the remaining episodes airing weekly, apart from the fifth and sixth airing together on 7 April 2022. In the United States, the series premiered on the Roku Channel on 18 March 2022, in New Zealand on Eden and on-demand platform ThreeNow on 24 March 2022, and in Brazil on Universal TV on 6 April 2022, with an earlier premiere of 30 March 2022, for subscribers of Universal+.
The show premiered in Mexico on 2 May 2022, on premium channel Universal Premiere and paid on-demand platforms. The series was subtitled "The Other Side of the News" (La otra cara de las noticias); the launch was commemorated by a special event of the same name on 11 May, that highlighted the "transformative role [female journalists] can perform [in] achiev[ing] gender equality in and out of the newsroom". It was helmed by Belén Sanz Luque, representative of the UN Women in Mexico, and attended by many experienced female Mexican journalists (including Paola Rojas, Denise Dresser, Pamela Cerdeira, Rossana Fuentes Berain, Bárbara Anderson and Adela Navarro). A photo exhibition and gallery featuring "prominent female journalists" was also featured at the Oasis Coyoacan Mall for the week following the event, in collaboration between Universal Plus and female-run media outlet Opinión 51.
In Ireland, it premiered on RTÉ2 on 7 June 2022 in a double-bill with all six episodes available on RTÉ Player after the first episode's broadcast, and in the United Kingdom premiered on BBC Two on 24 July 2022, also in a double-bill, with the entire series available from earlier that day on BBC iPlayer. The series was first made available in France and Germany by Arte on 26 January 2023 on-demand, with linear broadcasts starting on 2 February 2023.
The series was removed from the Roku Channel in the United States in September 2023, as part of several cost-cutting measures, in this case a move by the streaming service to render unavailable shows that had not been sufficiently popular beyond their initial launch. At some point prior to September 2024, the English version of Arte made the series available to US viewers until mid-November 2024. Following Reid’s role in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, its streaming channels AMC+ and SundanceNow began showing the series December 2024, with series 2 premiering the following August.
The series premiered on CHCH-DT, which covers southern Ontario in Canada, on 2 April 2024.
Production The series was created by Michael Lucas and Joanna Werner and directed by Emma Freeman. Filmed in Melbourne, the series was written by Michael Lucas, Jonathan Gavin, Niki Aken and Kim Ho. Joanna Werner and Stuart Menzies, along with Brett Sleigh and Sally Riley on behalf of the ABC, executive produced the series. The series was supported through investments from Screen Australia and Film Victoria.
Initial development The inception of The Newsreader was worked on by Michael Lucas following his six-part series Party Tricks in 2014/2015 - and had a "long gestation" period. Initial writing for the series took place "immediately after" Lucas finished working on the fifth series of Offspring in 2015. Initially, it was not centred around a newsroom setting, and instead aimed more simply to write about a male lead yearning to "fulfil" a "particular version of masculinity" that "wasn't an actual fit but he was just desperate to live up to it," a theme Lucas said was based on his own life experiences. This became the character of Dale, before Lucas realised there needed to be a female character to match him with, who would be "possessed of those traditional masculine qualities" instead; she would be "punished for them, whereas he struggles to fit into that masculine ideal." Lucas said the way in which the two characters flipped gender stereotypes was what he "found really compelling about them." Their relationship formed the basis of the series, with the additional layer of a 1980s setting decided upon due to the fact it would impose "more pressure on [the characters] to fulfil certain roles". Lucas then embarked on a year-and-a-half development timeframe, considering what "image of masculinity" the character of Dale would want to achieve. Within a few drafts, he had decided on a newsreader in a newsroom setting, with Lucas calling them "lions" and "voice-of-God men".
Over the course of 2015 and 2016, Lucas began researching newsrooms of the 1980s, interviewing those who worked in them at the time and being struck by stories of the culture. Lucas was drawn to learning how female newsreaders - who were a relatively nascent arrival in the 1980s - coped in an environment that put so much pressure on them, caught in an "era of change". He claimed they had to figure out how to "define how [they] should look in a workplace" and present themselves, as viewers still "liked hearing the news read by very masculine voices of God". Lucas has kept the identities of those he interviewed private, but Leigh Sales admitted to her part in his research ahead of the second series. Her stories and recollections have had a major impact on the series, and she has provided "a really great way of explaining the dynamics of relationships". Furthermore, she provided intricate details of the workings of a newsroom, such as the autocue, and the "panic" she felt at potentially something going wrong and "getting yelled at"; Lucas said that her regaling of these experiences inspired the character of Noelene.
Lucas noted the significance of most of his research into the culture of newsrooms of the time being conducted prior to the #MeToo movement, recollecting in an interview in 2021, how he questioned whether there would be a "profound change" that resulted from the movement, or whether society would have moved on by the time the show was broadcast. He lamented upon then-recent revelations about the culture in Parliament, and how "you realise we might have progressed in some ways, but there's still a lot of structural problems and a culture of bullying and misogyny linked to that." Lucas described the depth of research he undertook, claiming he "read nearly every newspaper from 1986" and that letters to the editor were of great significance and useful, as "they give you the full picture of what people were making of things [then]."
Inclusion of real-life events
The first iteration of The Newsreader was written on spec, and a pilot was scripted, with which Lucas approached the ABC, having worked with the network on sitcom Rosehaven. Lucas also considered taking the series to Foxtel, but thought the story would be a better fit for a non-commercial broadcaster; the ABC responded positively "really quickly", and they had the added advantage of an extensive archive of news footage and coverage that could be used. Lucas has said that he consciously reads newspapers, and watches archived bulletins, from the time "through a modern lens" in order to "see them in a completely new light", not only to fully take on board and recognise "the passage of time but also what I understood then as a child versus what I understood now".
Brett Sleigh at the ABC - who would become an executive producer on the series - suggested using actual, famous events as the structure of the series, as it was previously just set around "generic stories" like the more expansive rollout of ATMs; Sleigh was enthusiastic about "making the most of ABC archives", and recommended Joanna Werner, to whom Lucas gave the draft pilot script and became "really connected with it" with "clear vision about where it would go". Lucas said he immediately knew to start with the Challenger explosion, as that was the first major news event he remembered from childhood, while for the rest of the series picked events simply by looking at what happened during the first half of 1986, explicating that covering Chernobyl was unavoidable, but also that the series also covers less "date-specific" stories such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
From this, the decision was made to "tightly stick to a real-life timeframe", with episodes taking place over the course of only a few days at most. The crew received VHS tapes containing playouts of broadcast news bulletins on certain days, in order to judge the importance and prioritisation of certain news stories on the days episodes take place on. Freeman chose to signify to viewers as to specific dates on which events happened, which appear on screen at the start of each episode. Lucas, who was only experienced in writing "pure fiction", said that despite the somewhat "maddening" challenges that came with weaving in real-life events into the series, "following real events is what makes The Newsreader special", and it was a "fun puzzle" to "take those real life events and keep to the real dates, the real timeline," being aware of the "markers [you] have to hit", and simultaneously "weave fictional characters around them," to "take these real-life events that have their ebbs and flows that I can't change, and how that can provoke different relationships and turning points for the characters," and how to link them to elements of their personalities. He also claimed that the show does not entirely depend on those events being depicted, as regardless of whether viewers remember the events or not, the show allows for a "really interesting window into what those events were like and how newsrooms navigated them."