Plot Synopsis

Set in the fast-paced and challenging environment of the British newspaper industry, PRESS is a one-hour drama series that centers on the personal lives and the constant professional dilemmas facing its characters. The series follows their lives as they attempt to balance work and play, ambition and integrity, amid the never-ending pressure of the 24-hour global news cycle and an industry in turmoil.

Prodigiously talented and ferociously hardworking Holly Evans is the Herald's Deputy News Editor. She is a gifted journalist whose unique instinct for a story, commitment to the truth, and unparalleled ability to turn around copy has given her a place at the very heart of the newspaper, and she needs the people around her to move at her speed. This gift can be bittersweet: never explicitly anti-social, Holly has a tendency to bury herself in work to the exclusion of all else. As the series goes on, she begins to crave the thrill of on-the-ground reporting, and starts to question whether she is suited to a position that keeps her away from the action.

Both charming and manipulative, Duncan Allen rose through the ranks of journalism to become editor of The Post not via privilege but through dogged grit and force of will. Much like the tabloid he edits, he divides opinion: a hateful bully to his critics; an outspoken man of the people to his admirers. Either way, The Post's ongoing popularity is a product of Duncan's relentless journalistic instinct and determination to get the best from his staff - by any means necessary. He is unable to exercise the same control over his personal life and, as the series goes on, he faces terrible troubles at home.

Determined, principled and harbouring a dry wit, Herald editor Amina Chaudury is a decade into the job. Predestined for the role with an ambition that took hold at age seven when editing a school newspaper, Amina has witnessed the decline and fall of print media at first hand. She finds herself in a seemingly impossible position: struggling to balance the newspaper's liberal principles with pragmatism in the face of financial disaster. And it isn't plain sailing in her personal life either. Recently divorced, Amina must weigh up risky decisions outside of the office. Her mettle and outwardly calm demeanour is severely tested over the course of the series.

PRESS had its U.S. premiere on Sunday, October 6, 2019 on PBS (check local listings).