Dianne Reeves plays a jazz torch singer in George Clooney’s McCarthy-era film, Good Night, And Good Luck. It’s hardly a stretch as an actor but the songs she delivers are exquisite.

Near the start of the early 1950s period docu-drama Good Night, And Good Luck, a topical song can be heard ringing out from New York’s Columbia recording studio as staff from the adjacent CBS Television studios filter through the corridors. A jazz singer played by Dianne Reeves is singing an innuendo-free excerpt from Dinah Washington’s racy R&B smash ‘TV Is The Thing This Year.’ TV wasn’t the only thing that was making the headlines at this time though. But it would have made an unlikely subject for a hit record, as paranoia surrounding the threat of communism had spread throughout the US in the post-war period. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s commie witch-hunts had produced an atmosphere in which people were afraid to speak out in case they themselves were targeted. This sense of fear is portrayed wonderfully throughout this George Clooney-directed film. The story centres on a seminal figure in the history of broadcast journalism, Edward R. Murrow. On his broadcasts, Murrow championed individual liberties, and spoke out in favour of the public broadcasting role of television in educating and illuminating the general public. Located almost entirely inside New York’s CBS TV studios, a picture is painted of current affairs programmes fighting for airtime as they competed with the type of innocuous celebrity features that make advertisers and sponsors rub their hands together gleefully. The parallels with today’s so-called "dumbing down" of TV are obvious enough. We see Murrow, played by Oscar-nominated actor David Strathairn, mentally sleeping through his celebrity interviews – although a clip shown of Liberace inadvertently referring to his not "finding the right man" to settle down with suddenly unsettles Murrow for a moment. These were programmes Murrow was forced to front because they supported financially his cutting edge news programme, See It Now. But the main focus of the film centres on Murrow’s brave stand against McCarthy on five episodes of the programme that ran through 1953 into 1954.