I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about television. Outside of a few shows that I follow religiously, the set usually just runs as background noise. Most people have favorite TV shows or series, but there are probably fewer of us who have favorite TV writers. Still, I’m glad to see one of my favorites making a splash next Sunday night with Newsroom on HBO. Aaron Sorkin’s writing is, well, just dreamy. I loved the super-fast dialog and walk-and-talk’s on West Wing. His characters, for me at least, reach a hard to replicate level of believability for television. If the trailers for Newsroom are to be believed, it looks like he will hit the mark again.

Sure, Sorkin is an evil genius, notoriously hard to work with, and has an ego big as all outdoors, but damn, the man can write. He can suck you in and make you feel the story. Even when you don’t agree with the politics of the characters or even like them very much, he manages to find a way to invest you in the story and in the lives of the characters on screen. Not a handful of other screen writers manage to hit that sweet spot, but he does it more often than not. Plus, he’s writing for an HBO audience now which means the show won’t have to be dumbed down or cleaned up enough to be acceptable to the broadcast networks.

I’m not usually gushy about television, especially a show that hasn’t premiered yet, but I’m going into it wanting to like Newsroom. Come on, I can’t be the only person out there looking forward to seeing the news media through Sorkin’s slightly warped and monolog-ie perspective, right?