It is curious that in less than a week we have had two miniseries on HBO Max regarding known cases treated previously and recently in another prestigious series. On Thursday we saw ‘Love & Death’, which reviews the same issue as ‘Candy. Murder in Texas’. Today we have ‘The White House plumbers‘ (White House Plumbers), a new fiction about Watergate that comes a year after ‘Gaslit’.
Fortunately, this time there is a clear commitment to comedy that differentiates it from the proposal starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn. For this we have, yes, a luxury cast headed by Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux… who are the ones who raise a somewhat wobbly proposal.
Watergate with the ‘Veep’ filter
The culprit that the HBO series embraces comedy is David Mandel and his colleagues, who took over from Armando Iannucci in the last seasons of the great ‘Veep’. With this precedent, it was clear that the series promised to make us have a good time. However, at times he leaves you with the feeling that he doesn’t know what to tell… or, at least, how to tell it.
Which is not surprising. The Watergate scandal it has so many ramifications and there was so much going on at this stage of Richard Nixon’s presidency we are almost faced with a cornucopia of ideas within the reach of Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck, the creators and writers of the series. However, when taking them to the screen the result is, to say the least, diffuse.
The main virtues of ‘The White House Plumbers’ lie in the good work of Harrelson and Theroux, especially the second that gives him, within the almost caricature, greater control of his character, G. Gordon Liddy, than his co-star (who plays E. Howard Hunt). It’s not so much that Harrelson is bad but, like the tone of the series, he is more “fuzzy”.
What does not take away so that we didn’t have a great time watching this pathetic dynamic duo in action. In general, this miniseries is quite funny from the beginning and the entire cast (Lena Headey also stands out) rows a lot in favor of making us spend a very entertaining time watching the disastrous actions that characterized the scandal.
The bad thing is that, when it comes to having to deal with serious matters and developments, the scriptwriters do not manage to solve themselves well. The most dramatic parts of the miniseries, while necessary because it is a historical event, are not as well integrated as they should be, to the detriment of the final result.
In short, it is somewhat sad that ‘The White House Plumbers’ stay a little halfway due to an erratic tone and lack of polish depending on what sequences. Although it is funny and even hilarious, it remains a solvent replacement for this finale of the television season.
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