nubbin-bug-1701

Unusually strong Australian drama, driven by a pair of exceptional leads - Anna Torv and Sam Reid - with fantastic supporting cast.

The Newsreader's episodic structure places Helen and Dale's respective arcs against a backdrop of events in Australian and world history. Impressively, the script largely avoids pointing and laughing at 'the way we were', instead capturing a time of great change in Australian social and workplace history.

Michelle Lim Davidson is a standout supporting actor - Noelene and Rob (Stephen Peacocke) deserve the limelight as much as the newsreaders themselves - and Marg Downey is genuinely scary as Evelyn Walters. William McInnes plays Lindsay so well you can't help but like that see-you-next-Tuesday.

The strength of The Newsreader overall is perhaps in the characters' complexities. No one is perfect; no one is pure evil. Their reactions to the events and people around them make for compelling and deeply satisying viewing.

Surely one of the strongest first episodes of new television since ... I can't think of a stronger pilot. Rolin Jones and co. Come out swinging, setting up a world that felt very authentic and consistent to me as a die-hard Rice reader of the 2000s. The changes made to the timeline and Louis's character give us a great deal more to root for: this Louis is less helpless, less mopey and - as a brother owner rather than a slave owner - still complicit in the buying and selling of souls, but in a way that gives Louis opportunity for redemption as well as further complexity. His position in Storyville also gives us lots of NOLA flavour that no doubt Anne would've appreciated.

(There is, for instance, an ocean of difference between this smart adaptation and the concurrent 'Mayfair Witches' show.)

Sure, the Bit with the Priests at the episode's end is a bit American Horror Story, but that energy is reined in in subsequent episodes - and here serves to heighten the sensory overwhelm of Louis's 'final' days.

Even if you don't watch the rest (and you should), 'In Throes of Increasing Wonder' works as a self-contained story. I rewatch things I like; by this point, I must have watched this first episode 20 or 25 times. There's nothing else on tv like it.

Strong second episode, setting the table for Lestat's chaotic multitudes. Even as the story starts to move quickly through the years, there's an expansiveness to these characters - that's a testament to the strength of the script as much as the cast. Chemistry is 11/10. The dialogue is sometimes nearly as purple as Rice's, but sounds natural in the mouths of Anderson, Reid, Bogosian, Coleman, et al. And there's plenty of lightness - even joy: 'I am thinking Persian for our next carpet.'

@ the design team (LePere-Schloop, Oglesby, Orillion, van den Brink & co.): Where do I get this wallpaper? These soft furnishings?