Dreadfully Boring

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This is a well done, intelligent show. No wonder they did not air it, in these days of reality garbage. It is about a CNN type, 24 hour news network. It has good writing, is fast paced, and has good performances. Good work from Tim Matheson as the Tom Brokaw type anchor, being able to show more in a role than he usually gets (except on West Wing), Lisa Ann Walters is touching and funny, but best of all is the wonderful, much under utilized in recent years, Patricia Wettig. She is the wife of Matheson in this and a former reporter who has taken time off to deal with her bipolar disorder. In the last few shows, she is starting to rapidly lose control, stopping her medications and all hell appears to be about to break lose. Of course, the show only has 13 episodes and will end soon, so we will probably not get to see what finally happens. She should get another Emmy for her work on this, but most likely won't as quality is hardly recognized anymore. (proof positive is the fact that this show was only aired TWO years after it was made!!)

Fans of this series may not be aware of the very complex history of its production. This is a report from a BREAKING NEWS fan list: The TNT cable network produced BREAKING NEWS but *never* aired ANY of the episodes!TNT filmed the pilot in April of 2000, then came back and shot the remaining episodes from October 2000 to April 2001. Originally, it was supposed to air in January of 2001, but then TNT's premiere date for the show kept getting pushed back and back and back.... until they announced in the summer of 2001 that they weren't going to show any of the episodes at all. Basically, they canceled it without ever even airing a single episode.Lots of theories are floating about as to why they made such a ridiculous decision, but the prevailing school of thought seems to be that the series got caught up in the big merger between AOL and Time-Warner (parent company of TNT), and that the show became pretty much a nice fat tax write-off. That sent BREAKING NEWS into total limbo.So, in the Summer of 2001, producer Gardner Stern did kind of a guerilla sampling campaign by sending a few episodes on tape to several critics for review. The critics were understandably appalled at the way TNT handled the whole situation with such a quality show. Still, it was a bad time to try to shop the series around, since all the networks had already picked their fall line-ups. So, things looked pretty grim.Lead actor Clancy Brown was so sure that the show would never see the light of day that he and his biggest fan club put together a private screening of all the episodes for friends, family, and fans last October 2001, in Cincinnati. That was the only time any of the fans got a chance to see the show until Bravo miraculously (and unexpectedly!), bought the rights and premiered "Breaking News" in the Summer of 2002 -- the actual FIRST OFFICIAL broadcast of the series. That would make BREAKING NEWS eligible for the 2002-2003 nominating season for the Golden Globes, Cable Ace and Emmy awards. When Bravo was first promoting the premiere, one of their executives mentioned that, if ratings were *very* good for the the network, they *might consider* making new episodes. But the logistics of that would be pretty tough, even if the show was doing spectacularly, as most of the cast has moved on to some very high profile projects.

A well done program. Where has this program been? Some miss-casting really works. I think this program really captures what goes on behind a big video news room. I know this program will not last. Nothing I like ever does. So maybe I should say I don't like it, then it will be around for a long time. Well, I do hope it's around for a while.

I just saw the two hour premier of "Breaking News," and I must I'm impressed. The series essentially covers the life and times of a struggling news network and its attempts to get the journalistic "scoop" on fast-breaking news stories.So far, the series shows a good balance between portraying the working lives of the journalists and the personal lives of the human beings behind the scenes. If they keep up the pace, the series will be among the brightest summer shows of the 2002 season.Be forewarned: If you're looking for mindless entertainment, go someplace else. This show treats its audience with intelligence. Very well done.*** 1/2 out of *****