Breaking: The Newsreader beats second-season blues

WATCH / Read all about it

The Newsreader, starring Anna Torv and Sam Reid: just as compelling the second time around.

I’ve been getting the second-season blues recently. So many of the top-drawer shows I enjoyed in their compelling first season (Dr Foster, Manifest, Dead to Me, Morning Wars – need I go on?) jumped the shark during their second outing, with plot lines fraying at the seams. So I approached the latest, six‑episode series of The Newsreader with trepidation, having lapped up the drama of the first one with its faithful re-creation of a 1980s television newsroom and the raw, go-getter personalities who thrive in the crucible of broadcast news. In fact, it’s every bit as good. Set one year on in 1987, anchors Helen Norville (Anna Torv) and Dale Jennings (Sam Reid) are now the “Golden Couple of News” and as driven as ever by the age-old journalistic need to be right and ruthlessly first. But there are troubles afoot with an overconfident new CEO, and Dale’s ever-bubbling bisexuality is throwing his relationship with Helen into doubt. Like its predecessor, this season is propelled nicely by the characters, who create just enough suspense to have you hanging out for the next episode (8.30pm Sundays, ABC TV and ABC iview). Greg Callaghan

READ / Word smith

Readers will find power, celebrity, Charles Dickens and an unravelling of fiction itself sandwiched between The Fraud’s covers.

It’s been nearly seven years since Zadie Smith released her last novel (there’s been a play, The Wife of Willesden, and a short-story collection, Grand Union), so there’s been no shortage of expectation in the lead-up to The Fraud ($35). The good news is, it meets the hype. While billed as Smith’s first historical novel, its present-day relevance is clear. At the heart of the story is the real-life, 1870s London trial of a Wagga Wagga butcher who claimed to be the heir to the Tichborne estate. Watching on is housekeeper Eliza Touchet, who lives with her cousin, novelist William Ainsworth, and is captivated by star witness Andrew Bogle, who grew up enslaved in Jamaica. Power, celebrity, Charles Dickens, an unravelling of fiction itself – it’s all there. Melanie Kembrey

SURF / Aqueous solution

This Haydenshapes and Dion Lee wetsuit: the closest you can get to growing gills.

With fin-like “gills” tracing the spine and, in the women’s range, integrated corsetry adding structure and functionality, these wetsuits (women’s from $360, men’s from $380) appear to be as runway-ready as they are ocean-savvy. Haydenshapes Rubber is a collaboration between Australian fashion designer Dion Lee and Haydenshapes, an Australian surfboard manufacturer founded by Hayden Cox. The wetsuits are designed to fuse high fashion with high performance, combining architectural tailoring with innovative construction techniques. Crafted from high-quality, limestone-based Japanese Yamamoto neoprene for maximum flexibility and manoeuvrability, they are finished with flatlock stitching and glued seams, making a style statement both in and out of the water. Frances Mocnik

SHOP / Charmed, I’m sure

One charm bracelet’s grown-up make-over.

Sarah-Jane Clarke may be more familiar as one half of Y2K cult denim brand sass & bide (with Heidi Middleton), but since the pair sold the brand to Myer about 10 years ago, Clarke has been channelling her wanderlust into her namesake label, which has just launched a range of fine jewellery. The nine-carat-gold necklace ($3000), anklet ($760) and earrings ($790) draw on the designer’s childhood memories of her mother’s charm bracelet and are designed to be worn with interchangeable trinkets that include the sweetest diamond-encrusted palm tree ($1500). Just add a hammock and the latest page-turner. Melissa Singer

Get barking – sorry, baking – with these bone-shaped dog biscuit baking trays.

EAT / Bake the dog a bone

Reward your mutt with the goodness of a home-baked treat – in the shape of a bone. With Nordicware’s strong, non-stick Puppy Love Pan ($53), you can bake 16 doggie biscuits at a time (recipes for peanut butter doggie biscuits and bacon apple pupcakes are on the website). No more scouring the aisles for eye-poppingly expensive, canine-friendly snacks when you can make them yourself and get those tails a-wagging. Jill Dupleix

PLAY / Hello, Norma Jean

The Marilyn exhibition is in its last weekend at Sydney Town Hall.

Norman Mailer proclaimed her “a very Stradivarius of sex”; she had an IQ of 168 (i.e. was exceptionally gifted); hated the sun because she liked to feel “blonde all over”; and died in the early hours of August 5, 1962, nude and face down on her bed, clutching a telephone. Born in the same year as the Queen, she was just 36. Sixty-one years later, our fascination with Marilyn Monroe – actress, sex symbol, wife and mistress to famous men, avatar of Eisenhower’s hedonistic post-war America – is as undimmed as her luminous memory. This is the last weekend of an exhibition at Sydney Town Hall, Marilyn: The Woman Behind the Icon, that brings together more than 200 of her personal artefacts – clothes, letters, photographs, movie props and other items – selected for the insights they offer into the private world of a charismatic, enigmatic and ultimately doomed icon. (Tickets from $39; private tours at 11am.) Sharon Bradley

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