Press Passed:
The first season of The Broken News (2022), adapted from the British show Press, changed the setting from print journalism in the original, to the more visually exciting and definitely more competitive medium of television news.
Season 2, based on Sambit Mishra’s original script (Press did not get a sequel) and directed by Vinay Waikul, comes at a time when the credibility of the media is at an all time low. The battle is against the idealism and ethics of Awaz Bhaarti’s editor-in-chief Amina Qureshi (Sonali Bendre) and her brash, no-holds-barred counterpart Dipankar Sanyal (Jaideep Ahlawat) in the strident Josh 24X7. It does not matter to the general viewer how a television newsroom actually works, so the show is easily turned into a soap opera-cum-crime thriller, which is enjoyable and sporadically thought-provoking. There are enough references to real-life incidents to make it all look fresh and topical – the electoral bonds issue, a star’s son falsely accused of a crime, a mid-day meal scam, illegal data mining, international corporate giants pulling strings at the top levels of media and government, and of course, the inevitable political corruption.
In the last season, Awaz Bharti’s star reporter Radha Bhargav (Shriya Pilgaonkar) had been arrested for anti-national activities when she had tried to expose an intrusive Project Umbrella (remember Pegasus?) that would allow the government to invade anybody’s privacy. In this season she is out on bail and seething with rage. She makes it her mission to take on Dipankar and the Chief Minister (Srikant Yadav) and get her revenge. The level-headed Amina tries to dissuade her, telling her that she is losing her journalistic objectivity, but the new kind of journalism does not care much for being unbiased. Dipankar gets one such in his team too, the over-ambitious Rehana (Geetika Vidya Ohlyan), who is all for sensational coverage and sloppy on fact-checking.
Awaz Bharti is taken over by a multinational tech giant and their Mumbai head is Ranjit Sabarwal (Akshay Oberoi), Radha’s smooth-talking college boyfriend. Her current partner Kamal (Faisal Rashid) works with her, is an earnest protégé of Amina, and has absorbed some of her righteousness.
While Radha and Dipankar play their game of oneupmanship on air each night, there are others matters swirling around them – rival politicians spar, fake news take precedence while real human interest issues are ignored—whether it is water contamination in Mumbai the suspicious death of an influencer, the mass suicide of a family, sinister loan apps and openly- practised caste discrimination.
Ahlawat, Bendre and Pilgaonkar dominate the show, but other actors like Indraneil Sen Gupta, Taaruk Raina, Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, Jay Upadhyay get their scenes to shine as the journalists caught in the crossfire between Radha and Dipankar.
In spite of the holes real journalists could pick in the series, The Broken News Season 2 provides pace, suspense, intrigue, some romance, social commentary, high drama and solid entertainment over its eight episodes.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
