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Why it’s all bad news for the West Wing wonder Aaron Sorkin

July 13, 2012 12:53
Aaron Sorkin

By

Jennifer Lipman,

Jennifer Lipman

2 min read

'Crammed with incessant gibber-jabber" said the Washington Post. The San Francisco Chronicle described it as "a mess, but one you can't really look away from". And the AV Club blog worried about the prevalence of "self-righteous blather". Suffice to say, the reaction to Aaron Sorkin's latest series, The Newsroom, was not unequivocally flattering to the writer. By the second episode, the show had lost 20 per cent of its US audience.

Sorkin's first television venture since Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip premiered on British TV this week, with fans anticipating a return to form. Nearly a decade after Sorkin left behind his hit series about White House politics, The West Wing, he still inspires adulation. But it has been a rocky road from Oval Office to newsroom.

Studio 60, too obviously an attack on the Christian right and George W Bush, was a critical and ratings flop and quickly axed. But Sorkin bounced back. The Social Network, his 2010 biopic of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, won him an Oscar. The film, with its memorable lines - "You know what's cool? A billion dollars" - was an epic tale of hubris and greed. How close to the truth it was remains up for debate, but there is no denying Sorkin's version is the one etched on people's memories.

His Zuckerberg was a brilliant outsider fighting the system. The character recurs throughout his work, from the womanising lead figure in the movie Charlie Wilson's War to baseball manager Billy Beane in last year's Academy Award-nominated Moneyball.