The Newsreader (Seasons 1–3)

The Newsreader (2021) is an Australian drama you can watch online on iFILM. It drops you into the newsroom of a 1986 nightly bulletin, where ratings outrank the truth and the real drama plays out off-air.

Ambitious reporter Dale Jennings is desperate for a seat at the desk; on-screen star Helen Norville carries the broadcast while barely holding herself together. What begins as a strategic alliance turns into something messier, even as the headlines of the decade roll past — the Challenger disaster, the return of Halley's Comet, the first wave of AIDS panic. One moment the camera catches a flawless anchor smile, the next it finds burnout, sexism and job-fear backstage.

Anna Torv (Fringe, Mindhunter) and Sam Reid carry the pairing at the show's center, directed by Emma Freeman. The period detail is exact, the live-broadcast tension is real, and the honest look at how news gets shaped by flawed people gives it weight. Stream The Newsreader online on iFILM.