For some reason that escapes us, the Disney+ communication department He hasn’t been very wise this week and it has taken its time to announce its premieres. So much so that we found out when we opened this noon the platform that they had released ‘alaskan daily‘, the new series starring Hilary Swank.
It is not the only outstanding series that has landed this week by surprisesince season 2 of ‘Reservation Dogs’ has also done it (which we will talk about as soon as we can) but the neglect in promoting its relatively powerful releases is curious.
And it is that ‘Alaska Daily’ has a good cover letter: a 2023 Golden Globe nomination for Best Leading Actress for Swank and it is created, written and directed (at least the first two episodes) by Tom McCarthy, Oscar winner for ‘ Spotlight’. What makes her a rare bird, especially for being from a network (ABC specifically).
Journalist in Alaska
Swank plays Eileen, a star New York reporter whose career falls from grace after an investigative report. Reluctant, she gets a second chance when contacted by her former boss and mentor who convinces her to join the team of a small Anchorage newspaper to investigate a series of disappearances of native girls.
As you can imagine with this brief synopsis, McCarthy’s script, inspired by the series of newspaper articles “Lawless: Sexual Violence in Alaska“, spend a lot of timeperhaps too much for what she wants to tell, in exposing the typical protagonist who is completely out of her environment, a fish out of her water (practically reminiscent of ‘Doctor in Alaska’ and the like) and who has a hard time getting used to the methods you are not used to.
However, the fact that McCarthy wrote to Swank in such an unfriendly or haughty way (it’s not so much pride), it goes to a certain detriment, making the tropes that are normally exploited in these types of stories not work as much as they should. Which doesn’t mean that Swank is, as always, a great actress.
ambitious but tied
On the other hand, the status of ‘Alaska Daily’ as a rare bird occurs because it has an ambition of a series that we could see on a platform or cable type FX but with the restrictions of the open. This includes a tendency to give things a little chewed and conflicts are relatively light and shallow.
I think that, ultimately, the forte of ‘Alaska Daily’ lies in the potential of the case they are dealing with (and those that arise throughout the series). When the script gets closer to the journalistic side and to the characteristics of a territory as vast as Alaska, the series works much better than when it stays in “Journalist in Alaska.”