A soft-focus lens on the dumbing down of TV

'Morning Glory' is the latest Hollywood take on how its 'upstart TV cousin' treats its audiences, but it lacks the conviction to take a real stand, writes DECLAN BURKE

HE'S MAD as hell, and he's not taking . . . No, wait, he's making a fluffy omelette! It's impossible to watch Morning Glory'sTV show anchorman Mike Pomeroy and not think of Network's iconic Howard Beale.

News anchorman Beale, played by Peter Finch in Sidney Lumet’s 1976 satire on the declining standards in US television, suffers a nervous breakdown on air, and announces he’s going to kill himself live on air. When the show’s ratings shoot up, Beale becomes an unlikely hero, offering scathing state-of-the-nation addresses on America that culminate in his catchphrase, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not taking it anymore.”

In Morning Glory, currently in cinemas, ambitious young TV producer Becky Fuller, played by Rachel McAdams, is given the opportunity to resurrect the ailing morning show Daybreak. The thrust of Becky's plan is to dumb down Daybreakeven further, but she needs some grist for her mill. Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), a veteran and decorated journalist under contract to the network, is dragged centre-stage to co-host Daybreakwith Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton), and give the show some badly needed gravitas.

The parallels between Pomeroy and Beale are obvious. Both experienced reporters, they’ve grown disillusioned with the way news is reported on TV, and with the wider world in general. Beale is drunk when he announces, live on air, that he’s going to kill himself; Pomeroy, as a former employee tells Becky, has a habit of getting drunk and not turning up for work whenever he’s called upon to do a job he thinks is beneath him. Both men are hard-nosed journalists who regard with contempt their producers’ need to sugar the pill and when it comes to boosting the ratings.

The parallels quickly diverge, however. Beale, a pathetically quixotic figure, is at least serious about his threat of suicide, and firmly believes in the demagoguery he disseminates during his nightly broadcasts.

Offered a media platform for all the wrong reasons, he rails against the corruption he believes is undermining the American Dream. In pursuit of maintaining his principled stand, Beale becomes a self-parodying figure of fun, albeit one with a whiff of cordite about him, a totem for the race to the bottom, aka the ratings war, that has come to characterise and shape American TV.

Pomeroy is a rather different character. Director Roger Michell and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna make much of Pomeroy's disgust with Becky's demand that he co-host Daybreak, given that he's a Pulitzer-winning journalist with a reputation to uphold. Ford scowls, growls and barely refrains from stamping his foot, all of which is intended to convince the audience of Pomeroy's integrity. Unfortunately for said integrity, Becky's ace in the hole is that Pomeroy is contracted to the network, and is currently sitting on a €6 million dollar contract. Should he refuse to co-host Daybreak, he'll be in breach. Mumbling and grumbling, Pomeroy caves in. The idea that he might tell Becky to go stuff her contract isn't even broached by the filmmakers; Pomeroy's principles, for all his much- vaunted journalistic integrity, are obviously worth considerably less than six million bucks.

Perhaps this is Roger Michell’s idea of satire. Where the admittedly deranged Howard Beale was prepared to take his own life for his principles 35 years previously, society has changed to the extent that no one is even prepared to question the fact that Mike Pomeroy’s financial self-preservation is the only sane option, even if that decision costs him his lifetime’s reputation.

It isn't entirely clear that Michell intends this development as one worth satirising, however. The film, courtesy of the likeably feisty Becky, approves of Pomeroy's decision, even if his demeanour on camera is surly and combative. The big emotional moment of Pomeroy's conversion to the Daybreakcause arrives when the hard-bitten journalist dons an apron and cooks up a fluffy omelette live on air, and it's Pomeroy's insistence on the need for the omelette to be "fluffy" that again suggests Michell is engaged in satire. But to what end? Yes, Pomeroy goes his own way and ultimately provides Daybreakwith a scoop about a disgraced politician, but in the context of the show, his cookery demonstration is very much in keeping with the programme's new direction, whereas his scoop is the exception that proves Becky's new rules.

TV morning shows are pretty soft targets for satire, of course, being magazine-style shows comprised of “fluffy” items for an audience unable or unwilling, as it peers blearily at the screen, to digest serious news. It’s worth arguing that Michell’s soft-focus approach reflects the way TV audiences have become markedly more uncritical of TV’s output in the years since Howard Beale decided he was mad as hell and wasn’t taking it anymore.

In the 1980s, David Cronenberg's Videodrome(1983), Fellini's Ginger and Fred(1986) and Broadcast News(1987) all dealt with the rapidly changing dynamic in the relationship between TV and its audience. In the 1990s, SFW(1994), Peter Weir's The Truman Show(1998) and EdTV(1999) offered variations on how the new phenomenon of reality TV was permeating the public consciousness. Robert Redford's Quiz Show(1994) explored the extent to which the networks had always manipulated their audiences, a theme further expanded on by Danny DeVito's Death to Smoochy(2002), which featured news satirist supremo Jon Stewart, and George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck(2005). Anchorman: The Legend of Ted Burgundy(2004), meanwhile, featured Will Ferrell as a vain, sexist and self-absorbed TV host who was the complete antithesis of the painfully self- aware Howard Beale.

Anchormanwas set in the 1970s, while Quiz Showwas set in the 1950s, as was Good Night, and Good Luck, and it may be no coincidence that all turn a spotlight on an earlier age, when TV was, even then, still regarded as the upstart cousin of the movies. These days, as TV consistently churns out material superior to the vast majority of movies ( The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire,et al, along with Hollywood satires such as Actionand Entourage), it's a brave writer or director who attempts to suggest that film is a superior medium and argues that film is in a position to satirise TV.

In that context, Morning Glorybrings to mind Dr Johnson's dog, which walked on its hind legs; it is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all. Having decided to do it, however, Roger Michell really should have taken a stand, either way, on the dumbing down of TV, rather than concoct a fluffy omelette of pros and cons in which everyone in the movie comes out a winner, leaving the audience starved for any sense of conviction on behalf of the filmmakers. Morning Gloryhas just enough wit to rear up on its hind legs, but it's all bark compared to Network's bite.

TV in film

Network(1976) TV anchorman Howard Beale becomes a cult hero for announcing he's 'Mad as hell, and not taking it anymore' in Sidney Lumet's scabrous satire.

Videodrome(1983) TV equals brain damage in David Cronenberg's gothic depiction of television as a tool in a global conspiracy.

Broadcast News(1987) TV producer Holly Hunter juggles style and substance in the ratings war in James L. Brooks' black farce.

The Truman Show(1998) An unusually poignant Jim Carrey stars in Peter Weir's superb evisceration of the public's love affair with reality TV.

Good Night, and Good Luck(2005) George Clooney's brooding masterpiece on the politics of reporting Senator McCarthy's 'reds under the bed' witch-hunt.