Alaska Daily

When the show focuses on the reward and the struggle of the work, it’s fabulous. ... Even if it can get preachy, Alaska Daily’s warp-speed dialogue and efficient, network-TV execution ensure that viewers won’t get too bogged down in sermonizing.

The strength of the show is in burrowing into character and situation to find something fresh behind the basics. The pilot shows promise for what may, with time and care, bloom into a strong entry on ABC’s schedule, and a welcome weekly dose of McCarthy’s sensitivity and skill.

A solid, impressively credentialed and entertaining albeit conventional series that plays like a comfort-viewing, hourlong show from the 1990s. ... Swank and the supporting players are terrific together.

It may be a low bar, but if we’re watching a network series where we don’t roll our eyes or throw up our hands at what we’re seeing on the screen, there’s a good chance that we’ll want to see more of it. And Alaska Daily had enough to like to make us want to see more.

The actors do what they can to complicate that dynamic. Swank is saddled with the role of self-important killjoy, but she calibrates Eileen's prickliness with just enough respect for her colleagues to keep things interesting, and her co-stars make the supporting characters easy to like. But the show undermines them, playing up Alaska's folksiness to the point of being condescending.

Somewhere in here is a daringly kind and low-key show about the importance of small things and the value of humble decency, which – if it were possible to get such a thing commissioned in the first place – would be better off without the contrived antagonism of a big-city firebrand shaking everyone up. Unfortunately for Hilary Swank, Alaska Daily doesn’t really need her.

[Eileen Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank)] is among the more insufferable TV protagonists we’ve had in a while, and not necessarily in a way that Alaska Daily intends. ... The version of Alaska Daily that works best, in part because it’s the one that least involves Eileen: an overextended group of reporters and editors struggling to cover all the important issues affecting America’s physically largest state. ... ABC might be more inclined to be patient with Alaska Daily. But the show would require a fairly significant refocusing for that to be worth anyone’s time.