This is a fun watch! I loved the premise and the movie is an easy watch. I loved all the fake outs at the beginning where your not sure who the main character will be.
1x06 of Alaska Daily was heartbreaking and scathing. The ep addressed systemic inequalities in searches for missing white women are treated vs how searches for missing Indigenous women, after a white woman falls overboard from an Alaska cruise ship and an Indigenous woman goes missing in the woods.
Stanley and Roz’s deadpan exchange where Stanley (the paper’s editor in chief) is required to do an obligatory reprimand of Roz after she raises questions about the inequalities at a press conference and says he is “talking” to Roz about her “behavior” was gold.
“Are you done ‘talking’ to me?”
“Yeah. Good chat.”
And then Stanley heads out to the woods to join Roz in the search for Jade. I appreciate Stanley.
The gala having Indigenous performers while a million dollars is being spent on the search for one white woman and almost nothing spent on the missing Indigenous woman — Jade’s search gets done by the community, not official forces. A gala attended by the wealthy who are profiting off the governor’s puff PR “task force” where most of the money is spent on PR not resources.
The rapid-fire dialogue and the wry or deadpan humor of the team of reporters and the friendships among the reporters at TDA is enjoyable and the show finds humor while being raw about a range of issues from corruption to inequalities. I also liked that this ep developed Stanley and Roz’s friendship, the mutual respect, Stanley being a mentor and ally.
It’s interesting how the show depicts Roz, Eileen, and Stanley’s different kinds of angers. Roz’s anger is deep and quiet and stirred higher by being not listened to, not heeded, being overlooked. Trying to get people to listen. Eileen’s is sometimes a bulldozer and at times, well-intended white liberal crusader but she doesn’t always stop to think about the real personal impacts, she latches onto causes, but genuinely cares. Stanely’s anger is a tired anger. He knows how broken the system is. He’s given almost no budget to run the paper. He believes in the power the press has to bring about change, uncover truths, so Stanley tries to push and encourage his team to do work past the external limits set on them. Stanley and Roz in different ways both live in frustration, boxed in, but they know where the hidden cracks in the walls are and how to apply pressure to get them to crumble. While Eileen rams her her way head-on at every wall.
The whole cast is stong, and Hillary Swank, Grace Dove, and Jeff Perry (who plays Stanely) deserve a ton of critical attention of their roles in this. The show itself deserves a lot more attention. I hope it gets a S2.
🎬Recently disgraced reporter Eileen Fitzgerald leaves her high-profile New York life behind to join a daily metro newspaper in Anchorage, Alaska, on a journey to find both personal and professional redemption.
📝An intelligent, well written and thought provoking show. It will make you appreciate the important, tough and hard work journalists do. The whole cast is amazing and the main plotline is extremely important. I was sad to learn that ABC network has cancelled this (I suppose we can't have intelligent shows, when you can make mass produced rubbish). It is still worth watching because the story concludes at the end of the season, so you will not be wasting your time.
I hope they will shop it to another network. It's a brilliant show and worth watching. Episode 1 is a little slow, but stick with it, it's a very good series.
Very much enjoyed episode 2 of Alaska Daily. Eileen and Roz are forming up a tentative reluctant partnership and all the characters in the ensemble are appealing. The journalist characters as the paper each have their own stories going on, with some things carried beyond just the first ep, while the show is also clearly doing standalone stories, with the big overarching mystery plot of solving the cold case murder of an Indigenous woman. The series is also very much about the role of journalists and authentic journalism
ABC released some promo photos for ep 3 [x]. The series is filmed making great use of natural setting. It is in part filmed in Alaska (Anchorage) and in the Northwest Territories and Vancouver, BC.
Enjoy. The series is on Hulu and the ABC app day after airing.