THE Watergate scandal, in which operatives linked to the re-election campaign of US President Richard M. Nixon broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee on June 17, 1972 – eventually leading to the unravelling of his presidency – is one of the most pivotal events in modern American history.
The story has been told many times from different angles, including in the film adaptation ‘All the President's Men’ from 1976, one of the great American films that explored the topic from the perspective of Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters who cracked the case for the Washington Post.
HBO’s latest miniseries, White House Plumbers, tells the story from the perspective of the people directly responsible for the break-in, and this time instead of a straight drama, it’s told as a gut-bustingly absurd comedy of errors.
The show starts off with the tongue-in-cheek text: “The following story is based on a true story. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, because nearly everyone was found guilty.”
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Though a lot of it is based on fact, White House Plumbers is first and foremost a comedy, with most of what takes place on the show having really occurred. This is definitely one of those situations where the truth is stranger than fiction and the shows leans on that.
Our entry into this world is Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson), a disgraced former CIA agent toiling away at an anonymous desk job who gets a chance at glory when he is hired to do dirty work for Nixon (who isn’t a character on the show).
Partnered up with ex-FBI agent and moustachioed Hitler enthusiast G Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), they form the White House Plumbers – named so because it’s their job to plug leaks.
Created and written by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck, veterans of the acidic HBO political comedy Veep, and directed by David Mandel, who’s worked on Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, the show has a strong comedic pedigree that’s apparent in almost every scene.
Like Veep, this show debunks the notion that political operators are any kind of geniuses, but are instead shortsighted imbeciles driven by personal grievance. Hunt and Liddy tell everyone and anyone that they are patriots, but really they are laughingstocks who want to prove their doubters wrong.
Harrelson and Theroux are hilarious in their roles, with the former playing the uptight straight man, while the latter is more of an oddball cartoon character. They’re unlikely allies and it’s fun watching them play off one another.
It’s unclear how historically accurate their relationship is, but it works to bring us along for the ride on the five-episode series.
There’s also a B-plot involving Hunt’s increasingly frayed relationship with his family, namely dutiful wife Dorothy (Lena Headey), his hippy-ish children (Lisa Hunt, Saint John Hunt, Kiernan Shipka).
It gets a lot of screen time to humanise and explain Hunt, but it’s just not as interesting as the main story.
The dialogue of the show is often funny and clever, but at some point one wonders whether making light of such a scandal undermines the seriousness of what happened.
There is an undercurrent of danger – these are trained government agents, after all – but White House Plumbers is all about the big joke that brought down a presidency. – The Vibes, May 2, 2023
*White House Plumbers is available on HBO Go starting May 2, with new episodes every Tuesday
