Swerving in quality nearly every episode yet still sustaining a strong audience, HBO‘s “The Newsroom” approaches its second season with promises of rejuvenation and a return to form. Creator Aaron Sorkin has already discussed his decision to scrap the new season’s first two episodes for story reasons, while also hoping people “take a second look” at the series overall, but now the network has released a few new clips to show off the end result.
Taking its cue from such stories as Occupy Wall Street, the Benghazi consulate attack, and the Affordable Care Act, the new season finds Will MacAvoy (Jeff Daniels) in the center of another controversy—this time being a lawsuit lobbied against a shakily handled ACN report on the Obama administration. Marcia Gay Harden, as First Amendment defense lawyer Rebecca Halliday, is one of the many new faces on the show, as is Hamish Linklater (“The Future”), who features in the first of two clips hitting the web.
Linklater plays Jerry Dantana, a news producer filling in for Jim (John Gallagher Jr.) while he trails the Romney campaign in New Hampshire, and the clip shows Will’s wariness with him as the new presence enters the melee. Sorkin’s razor-sharp dialogue is present as usual; in the second clip—a confrontation between Will and MacKenzie (Emily Mortimer)—his talent for tense silence shows as well. Check both out below, along with a video (via Vulture) compiling every utterance of the word “news” on the show.
“The Newsroom” returns to HBO on July 14th.