Perfect cast and a good story

An action-packed slog

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

Great News might remind one of the Mary Tyler Moore show ... with variations on the characters in the MTM Show ...Ted, the clueless news anchor and Rhoda, Phyllis, Lou and Sue Ann Nivens all contributing to the mayhem and lunacy surrounding the life of the central character, Mary Richards.Great News does have a fairly decent supporting cast. Actually, the supporting cast probably carries the show and they provide most of the comedy. It's rather hard to tell whether the central character is meant to be Katie Wendelson or her mother or whether it's just supposed to be mélange with no one being the focus. Katie (Briga Heelan), unfortunately, has been poorly cast and makes it seem that the rest of the cast has to struggle to keep the show afloat.Definitely could have been a better, funnier show based on the concept and the talent exhibited by most of the cast, but the overall result has become bland and borderline slapstick.Maybe if the parts played by Nicole Richie (Portia) and John Michael Higgins (Chuck) became more central and Katie and her mother became more peripheral it would help.

This regurgitation of "30 Rock" is to that show what "Sons of Tucson" was to "Malcolm in the Middle". The attempt at the same formula is very apparent; quick paced camera shots, incidental music, the host of former mediocre walk-ons from Saturday Night Live as writers and Jane Krakowski's vapid, blonde starlet character being played by Nicole Ritchie (probably the only one on the show who actually punches above her weight here). After you get over the initial "Hey! I remember that person from that OTHER show!" novelty feeling, there really is nothing left to look forward to, since the dialogue, humor and overall concept is just unimpressive. And it's not like I WANT this show to fail; I really liked 30 Rock and Andrea Martin was one of the funniest people on the planet...back in the early 80's. But she, like Tina Faye and her humor, just don't seem to realize that times change, and we're not going to settle for "seconds" from a meal that's gone cold.

When I heard there was a new comedy from Tina Fey I had to check it out. But when i watched it, I thought, is this conventional sitcom about an interfering mother and her reporter daughter really by the woman who created 30 Rock and Kimmie Schmidt?? The answer is no. Fey is the producer but not the creator, and there is little of the insane, bordering-on-surreal touches that distinguish her own creations.Still, the series is reasonably funny. There are moments when it's quite funny. Andrea Martin does a solid job as the mother and things move pretty quickly.But after two episodes, I just don't see why I would bother watching this when there are series like Kimmie Schmidt and Speechless I could watch instead.

I started watching this because I really like Andrea Martin in Difficult People and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I didn't realize it was created by the 30 Rock writers. This show definitely started slow, and I don't love the lead actress. But I do like the rest of the cast. It reminds me a lot of 30 Rock, with a "normal" trying to deal with a crew of weird egoists in a television setting. It took that show a while to get going, and I hope NBC will give this show a chance to find its legs also. The fact that they're burning it off with two episodes a night seems to make that doubtful, but hey, maybe they won't have anything else to air. It's not like their comedies have been hitting lately.Verdict: Give it a try.