The West Wing Meets The Office In 3-Part HBO Masterpiece Praised By Quentin Tarantino
After joining Screen Rant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers.
It’s a rare TV show that earns praise from legendary movie director Quentin Tarantino, but one forgotten workplace drama on HBO managed just that back in 2015. This show effectively serves as Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The West Wing, while incorporating elements of The Office into its stylistic approach.
Almost 12 years after its three-season run on the small screen ended, The Newsroom is among the most neglected TV shows in HBO’s back catalog. An exhibition in caustic dialogue and prescient socio-political commentary, this series is one of Sorkin’s greatest works, and has only grown in relevance over the past decade.
It also features the best TV role of Jeff Daniels’ career, and a workplace dynamic worthy of comparison with the finest examples modern television has to offer. Despite its relatively niche audience, The Newsroom has something for everybody, from fans of serious political drama to those looking for a lighter take on the media industry concerned with events in Washington.
The series may have suffered from mixed reviews when it first aired, but it’s received the backing of a high-profile industry figure who’s generally sparing in his endorsement of small-screen releases. Movie director Quentin Tarantino has only recommended a handful of TV shows in public interviews, but The Newsroom is one of them.
Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom Blends The West Wing With The Office
The Newsroom shares major similarities with The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin’s previous political drama series starring Martin Sheen. There’s plenty of fast talking on the move, for example, and the same shrewd insights into the inner workings of U.S. politics, albeit from a different angle.
However, this HBO show is far more comedic in tone than its landmark NBC forerunner. The members of its fictional newscast team regularly exchange witty repartee, and it leans far more into political satire than The West Wing.
Although The Newsroom’s transparently scathing view of America’s political establishment generated a critical backlash among TV journalists, it now feels even closer to reality than it was in the early 2010s. Yet, there’s more to the show than party politics and authentic reproductions of the modern news cycle.
It’s fundamentally a workplace drama at heart, which focuses primarily on how news anchor Will McAvoy and his team go about delivering stories to viewers of the fictional cable network ACN. McAvoy is more serious about his job than Michael Scott, but there’s something of The Office’s playful dynamic between employees in The Newsroom’s portrayal of a journalistic engine room.
The Newsroom Is One Of Quentin Tarantino's Favorite TV Shows
In a sense, we shouldn’t be surprised that Quentin Tarantino is a fan of The Newsroom, given that scripting fast-paced dialogue is central to the filmmaker’s own way of working. Indeed, it’s the dialogue in this HBO series that got Tarantino hooked. In 2015, he told Vulture the following:
“That was the only show that I literally watched three times... I would watch it at seven o'clock on Sunday... Then after it was over, I'd watch it all over again. Then I would usually end up watching it once during the week, just so I could listen to the dialogue one more time.”
Even if Tarantino’s movie dialogue differs markedly in theme and structure from Aaron Sorkin’s writing in The Newsroom, it’s easy to see why the show appeals to him. Just as the characters in Pulp Fiction talk in a stylized manner synonymous with their creator, there’s no mistaking the imprint of Sorkin on the speeches we hear in this political drama.
Perhaps it’s the clarity of Sorkin’s own voice in The Newsroom that initially put various critics off the show. But Tarantino was characteristically dismissive of its mixed reviews from the press, retorting in anger:
“Who the f**k reads TV reviews? Jesus f**king Christ. TV critics review the pilot. Pilots of shows suck. Why would it be surprising that I like the best dialogue writer in the business?”
It’s hard for anyone who’s watched all three seasons of The Newsroom to argue with this sentiment. It’s high time that this daring political drama is rehabilitated and given the critical reappraisal it deserves. A generation later, the show’s salient points ring truer than Aaron Sorkin could possibly have predicted.