NewsRadio: A Look Back

Watching NewsRadio today, fifteen years after its debut and eleven years after it went off the air, it can seem a little jarring. Sure, Dave Foley looks like a kid (a fact that's frequently made light of on the show), but so does the rest of the cast; could Maura Tierney ever have been so young? And why did Phil Hartman have to go at what could have been the peak of his career? But aside from a few clunky references and some '90s-era technology, the show itself doesn't seem dated; in fact, the humor is edgy, clever, and remarkably prescient. There are elements of NewsRadio—especially in its clever staging, its brilliant cast, and its willingness to play fast and loose with traditional sitcom tropes—that makes it seem like an early harbinger of the revolutionary single-camera comedies that rejuvenated the sitcom format in the last few years.

So, are we talking about the last of the great old-school workplace comedies, or the first of a new wave of sitcoms that refused to play by the rules? Watch it and judge for yourself, but here are five reasons why the show deserves a spot in the annals of classic TV.

1. It featured one of the best ensemble casts, ever

NewsRadio was one of the first latter-day sitcoms to not treat its premise very seriously. Instead, it concentrated on the charismatic cast and the way its characters developed over time. The show's original lineup—Foley, Tierney, Andy Dick, Joe Rogan, Vicki Lewis, Khandi Alexander, and Phil Hartman—was one of the strongest sitcom casts ever assembled, and while they were given some standard situational elements to work with, the joy of watching was never the story, but the way this amazingly talented group approached it.

2. Stephen Root

Even with a cast this rich—indeed, even in a cast featuring the late Phil Hartman, who stole every scene he was in, as blowhard newscaster Bill McNeil—Stephen Root was playing on a whole different level. As billionaire station owner Jimmy James, he combined a folksy, hands-on approach to his staff with complete and utter dementia, delivering comedic non-sequiturs the way Babe Ruth delivered home runs. Odds are, if there's a NewsRadioscene you return to again and again, it's one that showcases Root's amazing comedic sensibilities.

3. The show was ahead of its time

Though it was still a traditionally written sitcom with a standard multi-camera set-up, NewsRadio stretched the boundaries of what was considered normal at every turn. Much of this played out in the rapid-fire comic dialogue and the way the cast members ricocheted off each other like Superballs, but one overlooked aspect of the show was its brilliant staging: It set the tone for future single-camera sitcoms by using every part of the screen, and having every corner filled with slapstick and visual gags. Sometimes the funniest action took place off screen, and no shot was wasted.

4. It pushed hard against the fourth wall

While NewsRadio was too controlled to go completely surreal and shatter the boundary between audience and performer, the way that shows like The Simpsons have done, it did delight in subverting and twisting traditional TV tropes. From the subtle running gag of giving every guest actor on the show an utterly banal name, to characters impersonating one another, to giant lampshades being hung on what seemed at first to be predictable jokes, its approach to TV comedy always dug deeper than it first appeared.

5. It's hilarious

All the fancy talk aside, NewsRadio was flat-out one of the funniest comedies to air in the 1990s, and a good candidate for one of the greatest of all time. It took traditional sitcom setups and premises and gave them a clever twist; it was unafraid to let loose even with utterly absurd ideas like throwing the cast into outer space for an episode. By the time Season 4 rolled around, an impatient network was forcing difficult-to-handle changes onto the creative staff, but even then, they judo-flipped the attack and created a season that contains some of the series' best moments. Sometimes—not often—NewsRadio lost its direction, but it never ran out of steam.