The Loudest Voice
Ratings: 2.5/5
Category: Television Mini Series
Director: Kari Skogland, Jeremy Podeswa, Scott Z. Burns, Stephen Frears
Genre: Drama
Release date: 15.8.2019 (Canes)
Star cast: Russell Crowe, Sienna Miller, Seth MacFarlane, Annabelle Wallis, Simon McBurney, Aleksa Palladino, Naomi Watts, Josh Stamberg, Rod McLachlan, Mackenzie Astin, Susan Pourfar, Lucy Owen, Jenna Leigh Green, John Harrington Bland, Vincent Tumeo, Barry Watson
Showtime’s gritty drama, ‘The Loudest Voice’, is heavy on perspective but lacks the required depth
The show, loosely based on a couple of journalistic articles about the conservative Republican, Roger Ailes, forgets to tie up unfinished ends.
Roger Ailes is a name that rings every bell in the most disoriented manner yet there are things about the man, whom Russel Crowe’s character perceives as “right-wing, paranoid, fat”, which are yet to be admired. His influence upon the American elections are remarkable in the most threatening ways and at the same time, his approach towards any news is in the least journalistic. A figure as culminating, contradicting, and yet vulnerable as Ailes finds a very lazy presentation on Showtime’s Tom McCarthy and Alex Metcalf developed show, ‘The Loudest Voice’.
Loosely based on Gabriel Sherman’s book, ‘The Loudest Voice in the Room’, the show takes a short trip through Ailes’ many accomplishments from building the largest television network in America to becoming an advisor in the Donald Trump campaign. However, as unreliable as its source material ‘The Loudest Voice’ seeks to polarize an already polarized figure without much consultation. However, perhaps the biggest risk the show has taken is by delivering an extremely slow grunted first episode which is bound to lose its audience within the first few minutes.
Taking a recap to Ailes’ zealous formation of the news corporation, the first episode is unlikely to keep the audience glued to the screen in spite of its hushed tone which is like a blatant attempt to reinforce intrigue in a Roger Ailes story. To be truthful, nothing really changes much in the second, the third or the fourth episodes either, except for the fact that we have a group of actors struggling to “keep it real” on camera. There is an unformed Annabelle Wallis who is the least appealing of the rest as she struggles to portray a victimized Laurie Luhn. Wallis has somehow managed to do away with Luhn’s uncompromising mannerism and instead gives us a beaten up, docile Luhn who cannot by herself, literally.
Naomi Watts fails to become the arch-enemy she is needed to be. (IMDb)
Something is always wrong with the wigs of the characters, and while Crowe has managed to keep us distracted from his awfully unfitting wig through his delivery, Naomi Watts seems to have had a lot of trouble keeping her head straight as Gretchen Carlson. Watts struggles to play her expressions through the horribly unfitting wig, and although she is set to stand as the character constantly challenge the lead, we see almost nothing of Watts until the last two episodes. The finale is easily the most intriguing due to the revival of Ailes’ archenemy but there’s so much more that could have been done with the time allotted.
However, what ‘The Loudest Voice’ lacked in characterisation it made up with frame perspectives and brilliant setting. Keeping muted colours as much as possible, the show has managed to pull off a convincing replica of an insane newsroom that delivers anything but news. Overall, ‘The Loudest Voice’ did a fair job in delivering what it had intended but it lacked the crisp arch which is needed to develop a character over the span of nearly 50 minutes.
