The new Max drama series e just got sideswiped by its corporate cousin, CNN.
Adapted from former New York Times reporter Amy Chozick’s memoir about covering Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign, the series puts feminism front and center by focusing on four fictional female journalists who are assigned to report on a presidential campaign.
While the show seems ripe for establishment media adulation — Hillary, the New York Times, girl-boss power, journalistic self-absorption — it has earned a surprising big-thumbs-down from CNN’s media critic Brian Lowry.
Both CNN and Max are owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Girls on the Bus “devolves into a CW-style drama that occasionally addresses the slow death of journalism on the most perfunctory level,” Lowry wrote, adding that the series is “at best a frothy soap opera” and at worst “an ethical twilight zone.”
The show compares unfavorably to Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom and is a universe away from any number of journo-themed movies, including Spotlight or All the President’s Men.
He concluded: “At a moment when journalism would benefit from any kind of morale lift, the last thing it needs is another broadly drawn series that seems to put a spotlight on the profession’s principles before backing over them.”
Variety also gave the show a negative review, noting the the female protagonist who writes for a New York Times-like publication is a moral hypocrite who seems unaware of her own hypocrisy.
“[She] rails against the sexist double standard applied to female reporters, including the media trope that they sleep with sources…except she does have a relationship with a press secretary that ends up crossing a line, so her speechifying falls on deaf ears.”
“Its frequent silliness feels inappropriate, while its occasional grandstanding comes off as entirely out of its depth,” the trade publication concluded.
The Hollywood Reporter wasn’t a fan either, noting that the show comes off as the kind of teen drama you would see on the CW.
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