Press takes place in a version of London where two newspapers vie for scoops, eyeballs, and impact, one more successfully than the other. The red-top tabloid The Post, which Duncan edits, is a thinly veiled version of The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s brash, ethically untroubled daily paper that often claims to have so much power over its millions of readers that it can influence elections and referenda alike. The Herald, where Holly is the deputy news editor, is a fictional take on The Guardian, a left-of-center, straight news outlet that’s perennially cash-strapped and bleeding readers. The Herald’s employees see themselves as performing a public duty. The Post’s think that the highest function of news is entertaining readers. “The Post is sexist, sensationalist, and doesn’t check its facts,” Holly tells Duncan primly in one of their earliest encounters. “I know,” he replies, unctuously. “It’s a lot more fun.”

The old adage about fictional female reporters decrees that there can only be two types: the kind who get drunk a lot and sleep with people they shouldn’t, and the kind who dress exclusively in shapeless knitwear and khakis. Holly, by some miracle of imagination, manages to be both. By day, she scours hospitals for sources and hectors a young acolyte (played by Game of Thrones’s Ellie Kendrick) about the importance of old-school reporting; by night she drinks compulsively, grieves a lost friend, and takes home a youthful intern from the Post, Ed (Paapa Essiedu). Riley plays Holly with equal parts dourness and magnetism, qualities that should be physically impossible to combine. You love to watch her, even when all she’s doing is squinting grimly at a laptop screen or frowning at people in meetings.

With Holly, and with The Herald, Press gets to pay homage to some of the best American journalism movies. (A Post reporter, after stealing a huge scoop from Herald writers, crows that he feels like he’s in a scene from Spotlight.) There’s a high-minded story line about a foreign correspondent who’s been fudging his reporting that mulls the kind of trust readers put in their media institutions. Holly reports out a colossal scandal about a high-profile billionaire who’s been abusing his power over very young women. Herald writers research stories about clothing companies relying on child labor and a shadowy MI5 operation known only by a code name. Even a small story Holly uncovers about budget cuts at a local hospital turns into a riveting showdown between a journalist and an exhausted executive, both intent on claiming the moral high ground.

It’s the scenes set at The Post, though, that best unpack the phenomenon of a certain kind of British journalism, where sex and scandal are paramount, ideally both at the same time. In the first episode, the rookie reporter Ed goes on his first “death knock,” doorstepping the family of a Premier League soccer star who’s just died by suicide. Ed, who failed to win a spot on the Herald’s trainee scheme, is clearly appalled by what he’s tasked with doing—informing grieving parents about their son’s sexuality one day, secretly taping a children’s TV presenter’s rants at a party the next. Day by day though, as his scoops repeatedly lead the paper, Ed’s integrity gets beaten down by the power of the front page.