An Australian Masterpiece ~ Series 1 - 3 2023-2025

DIARY

The Newsreader

An Australian Masterpiece

Series 1, 2 and 3

September 2025

(Series 1 and 2 2023)

I

The other night I was fiddling around wanting to move away from the Desktop. Time to relax. I went upstairs, enjoying that gentle click of the door behind me that announced to the study, the french doors (behind the drawn curtains) and to my postage stamp Garden of Eden tother side, that’s it, all. I’m off upstairs. It’s sofa time. See you in the morning for coffee outside.

That last is true. For regardless of weather and season, the day’s first coffee is always in the garden.

If it’s wet, well, I wander around, check that Winchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Koblenz the goldfish (no we’re not Goldfish, we’re Australian Sharks after Tom the Cat got the better of Hamburg last year, damn it!) are okay, fiddle around, as one does, catch glimpses of birds high overhead, completely missing the large pigeon watching me from the tree over the pond and “the Bench” ~ the three Justices of the Peace aka Crows ~ and then, timing it just right, leaping into the air to cause maximum hassle in the form of spilled coffee!! And a lot of impromptu giggling by me.

In these very dangerous times, I’m grateful I am able to do this.

I still stay away from the news until mid to late afternoon. Often I delay until late evening and occasionally I’ll deliberately leave any news out of the day. It is refreshing and easier since removing iPhone alerts.

I then wander back upstairs having checked that the desk is neat and tidy for the day’s writing to commence whenever; or to check that the pin stripe is pressed in readiness for the weekly Probus gathering; shoes polished, enjoy a slice of toast, a second coffee whilst working through the several titles that always bid me welcome.

Fortunately, I live alone so I can do this, more or less, without interruption.

Writing in 2023, I commented that the news the other night was bleak.

Two years later, today it is very bleak.

In July 2025 we are in a far more dangerous world. Our defence secretary, last month, announced that the international situation, the changed world, the passing of the old world, and sober defence review, requires the United Kingdom to go onto a war footing. That took a while to sink in. Many people don’t grasp it. And, candidly, I cannot help them grasp its meaning.

Again, in 2023, I wrote that having thoroughly enjoyed Saturday’s Strictly Come Dancing I thought, no. No news. No documentaries. Not tonight. I need to chill out. If I don’t then Kenney Wenney won’t be around to enjoy ‘chilling out’.

I went to BBC iPlayer. The caption The Newsreader caught my eye. I’m glad it did.

II

An Australian Drama, the BBC have leased the rights from the Australian Broadcasting Company - the world renowned ABC - to air Series 1 and Series 2 (and now Series 3).

Series 1 and Series 2 were enjoyed here in the United Kingdom in 2023.

The no-holds-barred American dramas and the even more brutal British dramas, have no appeal to me.

The Newsreader is a beautifully written script by Michael Lucas that presents to me, very real people, people who represent ordinary everyday human nature, rather than human nature’s terrifying extremes. Reflecting life in the 1980s - for me, simply yesterday - the storylines are real, moving, and presented in the manner in which we then lived in the pre social media, pre desktop era.

The Cast perfectly capture the lifestyle of that decade, so much so, that I wondered at first whether I was watching a series from yesteryear that had been given a makeover courtesy of AI.

I catch a glimpse of the vicious cycle that is all part of the package when one enthusiastically embraces celebrity status.

III

I like it for another reason. It reminds me that there is life outside that topsy turvy land of the free aka a disunited America.

I’m watching the English-Speaking Peoples who are very much attuned with us, and us with them, simply because two very independent nation states have the same head of state, just for the moment. That undoubtedly will change, as it will do for New Zealand. The warmth will undoubtedly remain and, I sense, will be a far greater warmth, a very natural warmth than the genuine friendship that exists between America and Britain. Never confuse friendship with familial warmth.

Watching Series I, even though it is not stated, I started recalling how Australia stood with the British People in 1939 and in 1914.

They paid a terrible price in both world wars. It also focussed my mind onto the geopolitics of the Second World War and of today. I see a map and see how close Japan is within Australia’s sphere of influence. Darwin seemed just a hop away. I’m skimming the surface. But this Drama series is refocussing my mind, reminding me that, thankfully, there is a world beyond America, and reminding me of my own very close ties to Australia and New Zealand and also because my sister’s brother in law and family live in Tasmania. My ties with New Zealand are familial, and through that with Queensland and Southport.

It reminds me too about Vietnam. And I know that I’ll be asking a friend in Queensland to recommend to me a title that enables me to read about Vietnam from the Australian perspective.

Here, in Britain, the Vietnam War is still seen as an American War. Yet, 60,000 Australians served alongside US troops. The UK’s current standing army is 73,000, excluding the senior service ~ the Royal Navy, and the junior service ~ the Royal Air Force. The UK population 69,634,746 million on today’s Worldometer, also records Australia’s population as 26,974,026 million. [ii] Australia’s commitment pro rata to fighting alongside the USA was enormous.

IV

The Newsreader Series 1, 2 and 3, is an outstanding production. And the cast are thoroughly believable. Something else, too. In Britain in 2023 the good old BBC has had something of its own night of the long knives. Our main news anchors disappeared. A new lot has come in, the millennial generation and with it the consequent drop in values and standards.

We now have podcasts and newscasts and we have shifted away from the gravitas of news reporting, to the millennial tendency to belittle the older generation. Eighteen months on, in 2025, this trend is decidedly ugly.

It is easy to lay in to the media, to news readers and their camera crews.

Series 3 in 2025 gives me a very different perspective when the character Dale Jennings is replaying in headphones the negative publicity he is receiving. It immediately refocused my mind on the 2020s and it sobered me and chastened me. Now THAT is the power of a superb script, a galvanised cast and direction that makes it clear “we’re holding no punches. We’re going to show the seedy side of public adoration! We’re going to remind everyone who watches that office bullies are everywhere, that CEOs are good, indifferent and often plain bad.

The absence - nay, departure - of any and all deference, leaves this world in a very, very dangerous place.

I am severe with journalists who do not undersand when there is a time to refer to the King’s ‘mum, and a time to refer to His Majesty the King’s mother, the Late Queen Elizabeth II.

Both are acceptable.

The challenge is knowing in which situation we use one or the other.

To do so on the BBC’s News at Six, again at 10pm and again on a frivolous Newscast edition reminds me that my world has quietly slipped away when I wasn’t looking.

How strange, that at the very moment I’m finding myself thinking that the BBC News seems to be shifting increasingly to celebrity format, the character Geoffrey Walters superbly played by Robert Taylor, makes that very comment, that there is a danger of a shift away from serious news to celebrity style format.

Because the BBC in 2025 is brimming with journalists I once greatly respected and paid much attention to, now ogling in their own perceived celebrity status.

That pulled me up short. Thank goodness I’m the age I am. Soon I’ll hear the approaching train to take me back home.

Series 3 is the blockbuster of the trilogy. Realism came so close to the truth that at times I wondered whether someone had been reading my own notes, not that any are written.

Is the Newsreader Trilogy larger than life? In a way, I’d like to say yes. But I cannot. The scenes depicted in Series 3 I’ve seen for myself. The ugliness of the character Lindsay Cunningham, well, yep, very believable and superbly portrayed by William McInnes. I cannot write here of every member of the cast, but all of them, yes all, have done a brilliant work together.

To see how the characters Helen Norville and Dale Jennings interweave and hold all three series so beautifully to the climactic end game set in Berlin as the Wall came down, portrayed by Anna Torv and Sam Reid is game, set and match, for me.

V

The Newsreader is Australian Drama at its finest. And you know what? Throughout all three series I felt as if I was amongst my own, with similar mindsets and international outlooks.

That is something that was last achieved by the multi-series West Wing at the turn of the century. And that disappeared over the setting sun decades ago. A murcurial America is making sure of that.

Australia, stay right out there in front.

That is where you have the right to be.

And you’ve darned well earned it.

And I’m not the only pom saying this.

KTW|IBM 2025

“Thank you Australia.

Just as Prime Minister Sir Robert Gordon Menzies (i) stood with Churchill at the Country’s darkest hour during the Battle of Britain, you’re doing it again. Brilliant.

But he also had the confidence and courage to stand up to Churchill in 1942 following the Fall of Singapore, when the PM insisted on bringing Australian Troops home to defend Australia, when Churchill had demanded that they instead go to Burma.

When I look at the map I know that the Australian PM was damn well right.

Regardless of how things play out, there will ALWAYS be a warmth between us that the rest of the world can never quite fathom.

G’day”

— Kenneth Thomas Webb

16 September 2025
All Rights Reserved


Liverpool and Gloucestershire


© 2025 Kenneth Thomas Webb

Note 1 (i) Sir Robert Gordon Menzies Source is by courtesy of David Sansome of Australia and to whom I am most grateful
Note 2 (ii) Worldometer updated as on the declared figures for both Nation States 16 September 2025.

First written 23 November 2023