The last time a major network had a prime time drama set in Alaska was the ‘90s. Since then, it’s been all Slednecks and Gold Rush. That changed in a big way this fall, with ABC heavily promoting its newest prime time drama, “Alaska Daily.” It’s got a big star, a decent premise and a seemingly endless advertising budget.
The show is vaguely based on the “Lawless” series the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) and ProPublica ran in 2019, and if you want to know more about this came together you should absolutely read it about. But if you just want the CliffNotes:
Hilary Swank is a big city, very serious, journalist. We, the humble audience, can tell she’s a very serious journalist because she’s meeting with a source in China to get a thumb drive containing incriminating information about a General. She’s so serious about journalisming that she forgets to be nice to her coworkers and gets publicly canceled from her serious NYC job.
This leads Hilary to exercise on her Peloton (with her hair down) for four months, until she’s interrupted by a former editor whom she held a grudge against for 17 serious years. The pleasant Alaskan (who has a striking resemblance to a real-world ADN editor) asks if Hilary will come help his struggling small market paper, and Hilary turns it up to a 9 on a Richter Scale, and she screams “I’m Done, I’m DONE, I’M DONE!”*
The Alaskan, who is so old school that he still reads a hard copy of a newspaper when he’s got that East Coast jet lag, convinces Hilary to come to Alaska. When she arrives in Anchorage, Hilary finds herself in many unserious situations in the “minor leagues,” like when she meets a poet pilot at a bar, but she’s reporting on the unironically serious topic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). Many side characters are introduced, but Hilary isn’t too happy about that because she “works alone.” Hilary navigates the MMIW crisis as she flirts with some Sandra-Bullock-in-the-“Blindside”-esq tendencies, and mostly relies on her reluctant partner Roz (Grace Dove).
The perfect metaphor for this show’s general vibe is when Claire (Meredith Holzman) is reporting on a local diner closing to make room for a chain burger restaurant. (Aside: I remember when “Olive Garden Applies for Building Permit” was on the front page of the real-life Anchorage Daily News. We love chains, so this is an obvious outsider plot hole, but let’s move on.)
Claire attends a city council (Assembly) meeting in an adorable log cabin. At the log cabin town hall, they are debating whether the city should allow the chain burger restaurant a permit OR to give the local diner historic status, thus saving it. Much like the difference between a log cabin and the actual Assembly Chamber at the library, they have quaint screaming matches.
Citizen A: Corporate greed is destroying America.
Citizen B: That’s elitist crap.
What a refreshing take on Anchorage public process, and one that is completely devoid of reality. IRL, Assembly meetings have turned into a place where the worst side of people is on display and the arguments have much more consequence than a local diner closing. Maybe it’s the network TV of it, maybe it’s that I’m too close to the subject matter, but “Alaska Daily” seems to whitewash the complexities of many serious issues.
I mean this is the best possible way. This is a show you watch with your parents when you are visiting for the holidays, before you all go to bed at 9 p.m. It’s not like sitting next to your parents watching “Euphoria” or “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Instead, it’s enjoyable to see a legit movie star running into a moose on the Coastal Trail. It’s fun to laugh at Anchorage’s strip mall culture. And cute when they fly in a weighted down float plane from Anchorage to Kodiak and back in a day.
Moral of the story: “Alaska Daily,” much like Anchorage, is fine.
*Since “Alaska Daily” was made by the same creator as the film “Spotlight,” I’m assuming they showed her a clip of Mark Ruffalo screaming “THEY KNEW” and said “do that.” BUT instead of giving her character any time to develop she just launched right in at minute 8.
