BEHIND THE MASK (THE NEWSREADER, SERIES TWO)

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Series Two of 'The Newsreader' casts us back into the 1980s - 1987 and 1988 to be precise.

Labor's Bob Hawke is Australia's Prime Minister.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana are preparing to join in the country's bicentennial celebrations.

'Neighbours' has become a massive TV hit in its homeland and the UK, launching the careers of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Guy Pearce.

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The News at Six is now being fronted by Anna Torv's Helen Norville and Sam Reid's Dale Jennings whose romantic involvement has seen them pitched as TV's Golden Couple.

Robert Taylor's veteran anchorman Geoff Walters has emerged from retirement and gone to a rival channel's news show.

Helen, Dale, Stephen Peacocke's sports editor Rob Rickards and Rory Fleck Byrne's witty Irish talk show host Gerry Carroll have been roped into filming a cheesy 'We Are The World' style promo of them singing a song to celebrate the bicentennial.

William McInnes' bellicose News At Six editor in chief Lindsay Cunningham is now answering to Daniel Gillies' suave media mogul Charlie Tate who owns the station.

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However his future is far from guaranteed, with Tate sounding out Chum Ehelepola's head producer Dennis Tibb on possible replacements.

Firmly in the public spotlight, Helen and Dale feel the weight of public expectation as audiences expect them to announce they will get married.

They also have to handle a vengeful Geoff Walters and his wife, Marg Downey's Evelyn who are still smarting from him being forced into retirement as the News At Six anchor.

Things get so bitter that Queenie Van De Zandt's tabloid gossip columnist Donna Gillies is deployed in this battle, chasing rumours about Helen being treated in a psychiatric unit for schizophrenia.

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Geoff and Evelyn's turbulent relationship with their own drug addict daughter, Philippa Northeast's Kay Walters also threatens to spill out publicly, while Dale risks being exposed for his own double life.

Over the course of six episodes, writers Michael Lucas, Kim Ho, Adrian Russell Wills and Niki Aken and their director Emma Freeman build these stories around real life news events just like the first series.

Episodes are crafted around the 1987 Australian Federal Election which saw Hawke's Labor Government clinch a third consecutive victory, the international stock market crash and rumours around the Prince and Princess of Wales' marriage.

Australia's bicentennial celebrations and Melbourne's Hoddle Street shootings also feature, while Freeman and her editors Julie Ann De Ruvo and Angie Higgins rather wonderfully weave footage of an old Kylie Minogue interview into a sequence where Helen and Dale interview her live on the News At Six.

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Once again, Series Two of 'The Newsreader' deftly balances the thrills and spills of events in the newsroom and TV studio with peeks behind the curtain into its protagonists' lives.

In doing so, Series Two is even more explicit about the disconnect between public perceptions of newsreaders and the chaotic reality of their messy lives.

It's very strong on the lengths to which some TV presenters and journalists will go to either protect or progress their careers.

Lucas, Ho, Wills and Aken give their characters real depth and clear flaws.

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This is delivered so well that audience perceptions of characters may shift throughout the series as their insecurities are brought to the boil.

Inevitably Torv and Reid dominate the drama.

The former turns in a towering performance as Helen, clearly the best journalist in the newsroom but battling sexism and male insecurity every day.

Reid continues to thrive by focusing on Dale's ambition and vulnerability.

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Taylor and Downey are impressively pompous and petty as the Walters, while McInnes increasingly shows a ruthless streak with a character some may dismiss as a stereotype, only to realise they have rushed to judgment too soon.

Rory Fleck Byrne is a terrific addition as a light entertainer who harbours a secret of his own but who knows how to play the fame game, even taking Dale under his wing.

Michelle Lim Davidson once again impresses as Noelene Kim, a talented but often overlooked newsroom researcher from a Korean family whose romance with Rob Rickards exposes some uncomfortable questions about race.

Occasionally, 'The Newsreader' threatens to spill into pure soap opera.

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However the performances -even of minor characters like Northeast's Kay Walters and guest characters like Hunter Page-Lochard's Aboriginal rights activist Lynus Preston keep the show really grounded.

Once again, its authenticity is a real asset.

The writers seem to really understand the dynamics of a newsroom - the tensions, the surge of energy as news breaks, the backbiting that can go on.

The attention to detail will also bring back memories of the style and fashions of the 1980s for anyone over 45.

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But mostly it's a well written, impressively acted, pacy drama about journalism that avoids being stiff and unconvincing.

With plenty of juicy morsels still to chew on for future storylines, roll on Season Three.

(Series two of 'The Newsreader' was broadcast in the UK on BBC2 between November 9-24, 2023, with all episodes available on the iPlayer from November 9, 2023)