A very powerful unit still of Anna Torv as Helen Norville from The Newsreader’s S01E01 - Three Two One. She’s out to get you, Lindsay!

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“You said it at the Christmas party. You said it four times in November.”

On this January evening, Helen Norville was a woman out for a neck.

You see, a certain someone by the name of Lindsay Cunningham appeared to be going back on his promises. Multiple times last year, she had posed to her news boss that she could put together a series of special stories, one every week. He had seemed to be receptive of this at the time. Which is why this next remark came as a shock to her. “Christ Helen! You can’t go off anything a bloke says at a bloody Christmas party!” And just why shouldn’t you, Lindsay? So what did those discussions in November mean, then? That wasn’t Christmas!

Somehow, Helen had come into 1986 thinking things might be different. She had been on the news desk for two years now, surely it was time for her to show audiences what she can do; that she was perfectly capable of doing more than the lighter human interest stories, that she can tell the stories that matter most. She had so many ideas for these special stories and the perspectives these could highlight. All she needs is the all clear to go.

But after tonight’s game of switcheroo, rather than reading the latest development in the Margaret Thatcher Westland scandal, she had been stuck with a bloody puff piece about backyard barbecues and carnivals for this weekend’s Australia Day celebrations. “Hey, wasn’t I… I thought I was reading the Thatcher story?” Helen noted, as she spotted that the letters “G.W” topped the story on the autocue, rather than “H.N”. The owner of the initials former; her much older, much more male costar Geoff Walters, replied rather smugly, “There was a late change.” As her face contorted in barely contained rage, she knew exactly who was responsible for this; and his initials were “L.C.”