Television series

The Loudest Voice

Name: The Loudest Voice
Genre: Drama
Released: 2019
Cast: Russell Crowe, Sienna Miller, Aleksa Palladino, Naomi Watts, Seth MacFarlane

Biopic

A prosthetic-heavy Russell Crowe disappears into Roger Ailes, the Nixon operative who reinvented cable news as a nightly grievance machine and, in doing so, remade American politics. It's angry, propulsive, occasionally over-egged television — part media history, part reckoning with the women he crushed on the way up. Best for anyone who wants the receipts behind Fox News's rise, not a balanced hearing.

TVMaze rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to close-up portraits of power, where the psychology of one brilliant, ruthless operator explains a whole political moment, and you enjoy watching a mind work through its own rationalizations.

Skip it if you want a fast, plot-driven thriller, since this moves through talk, memory and shifting viewpoints far more than action, and its restless jumping between perspectives can feel diffuse.

What it asks of you: Seven hour-long episodes, brisk in rhythm but dense with dialogue, so it rewards close attention and rarely lets up its tense, grim tone.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Bombshell2019

The same newsroom, the same year Ailes fell, told from the other side of the desk — Kidman, Theron and Robbie as the women who brought him down.

But Covers ground you'll have just watched, from a more sanitized, star-vehicle angle.

Succession2018

If you liked watching one ruthless old man bend a media empire to his ego, this gives you a whole dynasty of them, funnier and even more venomous.

But No real-world catharsis here — it's fiction, and nobody ever quite faces consequences.

Vice2018

Christian Bale vanishes into another real-life power broker under prosthetics, with the same interest in how quiet men build machines that run the country from the shadows.

But Adam McKay's fourth-wall-breaking, jokey style is a big tonal swing from Loudest Voice's straighter drama.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Loudest Voice

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

A Face in the Crowd1957

Elia Kazan's film essentially predicts the entire Ailes project — media performance curdling into political control — with unnerving precision, six decades early.

Andy Griffith, cast wildly against type, plays a folksy TV personality who discovers he can turn charisma into political power — the Ailes playbook, written and filmed decades before Fox News existed.

But Black-and-white, stagey by modern standards, and its warnings can feel almost quaint until they don't.

Fosse/Verdon2019

Another Showtime limited series built entirely around a towering, difficult, transformative lead performance and the people who paid the price for his genius.

But Show business instead of politics — the stakes are personal and artistic, not national.

American Crime Story2016

A prestige limited series that treats a real, recent tragedy with the same seriousness and structural ambition, jumping through time to build a portrait rather than a straight biopic.

But Different world entirely — fashion and celebrity, not cable news and the GOP.

Mrs. America2020

Cate Blanchett's Phyllis Schlafly is Ailes' spiritual cousin — another architect of modern conservative media strategy, seen through a sharp, multi-perspective ensemble.

But More talky and political-history-minded, with less of the tabloid scandal momentum.

Confirmation2016

A tighter, earlier true story of harassment allegations colliding with raw political power, and how institutions close ranks around the powerful man.

But A TV-movie budget and pace next to Loudest Voice's fuller six-hour treatment.

The Comey Rule2020

Another Showtime limited series wrestling with the Trump-era collision of institutions, ego and media, with Jeff Daniels doing the heavy lifting this time.

But Drier and more procedural — less interested in psychology, more in the paper trail.

Frost/Nixon2008

Goes back to the Nixon-era media playbook Ailes himself helped invent, with Frank Langella's Nixon as a fascinating echo of the disgraced men this world keeps producing.

But Cooler and more theatrical — a two-hander interview drama, not a sprawling character study.

Weiner2016

Same engine as Loudest Voice — hubris, media spectacle, self-destruction — but stripped of prosthetics and reenactment, so the collapse feels unbearably real.

Fly-on-the-wall documentary access to a real politician's public collapse in real time, cameras rolling through humiliation he can't stop inviting.

But Squirmingly intimate and occasionally exhausting — there's no dramatic shaping, just a man's downfall in unedited real time.

UnREAL2015

Same moral architecture as Ailes' newsroom — a manipulative image-maker exploiting women to build a product — just relocated to reality TV's grubbier, campier register.

A pulpy, blackly comic drama about producers manufacturing narratives on a reality dating show, run by a toxic boss who grooms and exploits the women beneath him.

But Trashier and soapier by design — this is a Lifetime series, not a Showtime prestige drama, and it revels in that.