When screenwriter, playwright, television scenarist, and denouncer of leftist pieties and prejudices Paddy Chayefsky wrote the movie Network in 1976, he made television seem awfully small. Here was a film, released by that most forward-looking of studios, United Artists, with A-list movie stars (Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall) and several bona fide screen legends (William Holden, Peter Finch) appearing as assorted on-air and behind-the-scenes personnel from a fictitious broadcast network. Because of the trenchant tone of the film and the magnitude of its cast, Network had the effect of diminishing its subject, cutting it down to size. The movie made TV seem tawdry, cheap, and as disposable as a pack of gum.
The Apple TV+ series The Morning Show has a near-identical setting and similar star power:
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