Here is a list of things I love (incomplete), all of which are pertinent to HBO’s new dazzlingly cast hour-long White House Plumbers (30 May, 9pm, Sky Atlantic): Justin Theroux’s huge performance in Maniac, truly one of the best shows Netflix has ever produced and worthy of an annual rewatch if you haven’t already; Woody Harrelson’s performance in True Detective, which is worthy of a biannual rewatch even if that finale is still … well, still like that; HBO shows that absolutely commit to one slightly annoying TV-making tic, such as the turning-to-camera thing in last year’s Winning Time. I love really stacked casts and I love period-set pieces that lampoon the moment they are set in while still being lovingly immersive. A list of things I don’t love (also incomplete): White House Plumbers.
The set-up is this – Americans are still obsessed with Watergate. It’s absurd how much I have heard about Watergate when it happened in a country I don’t live in 15 years before I was born and basically amounted to a bit of sticky tape over some door locks and some badly concealed tape recorders. (The main leaker, who had a universe of nicknames to anoint themselves with, chose Deep Throat? Come on!) But for some reason America is still convinced it’s one of the most fascinating moments in espionage history and should be retold, yet again, even though we already have All the President’s Men. And so: five episodes, Woody Harrelson opposite Justin Theroux, an enormous production budget and a supporting cast so stacked as to be almost unbelievable.
We have: Lena Headey, who is criminally underused throughout; Judy Greer, who gets a bit more to chew on but barely; a couple of out-of-nowhere appearances from Domhnall Gleeson. Actors you recognise from everything you’ve ever watched wander down hallways and half-guide Theroux from one room to another. Rich Sommer! Gary Cole! Jon Glaser is in it for one scene! Kiernan Shipka is in it so briefly I wouldn’t even call it a “cameo”, more a “half-cameo”, as in we need to invent new language for how little Kiernan Shipka is in this show. Kathleen Turner and Ike Barinholtz are there. You can have a little tiny bit of Toby Huss, as a treat. All of which suggests these people thought the show was going to be good, and their appearance would add to the bouncy joy of it, but something went wrong and: no.
There are a couple of main problems with White House Plumbers, one of which is: Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux are acting in completely different shows. Did they read different scripts? Were they given wildly different energy pitches over schmoozy LA lunches? Either way, there’s a dissonance in the leads, and it makes everything stumble as a result. Theroux is doing a wonderful G Gordon Liddy, straight back and nose-to-teeth moustache and a tie the width of a tractor tyre, always half a degree from a comedy. Harrelson’s E Howard Hunt, meanwhile, spends most of his scenes chewing his bottom teeth and yelling into his phone while pointless family drama plays behind him. It’s as if they acted it all out on separate greenscreens without seeing for a second what the other person was doing.
Perhaps this is why the second issue is so prominent, too: the pacing is all off. The first episode leans on the old stop-and-freeze trick of flashing a character’s name up on screen when we first see them, with click-clacky typewriter noises and a feeling that all this clumsy espionage is one big goof, a crutch it abandons after episode two and forgets entirely by episode three. There was a chance for this to be a very fun caper about just how inept the two men tasked with breaking into a hotel were at breaking into a hotel. Instead, it gets stuck in a weird mire of side-stories – country club memberships and hippy children dropping out of university and missing a phone call but then phoning that person back anyway. There is an extended bit where Woody Harrelson refuses to go to watch his son’s band play, and it’s like: sorry, what has this got to do with anything? Put a wig on and do some spying, man!
But then I also wonder how hard a show that hinges on its two leads being boorish, diehard, anti-commie capital-P patriots (and you, as a viewer, finding that very well lampooned and also a funny joke) can really hit when, well, people are still more or less like that. Anything set in the 70s has to have two things: a funny recreation of red scare jumpiness, and people smoking indoors. White House Plumbers has both in abundance, but neither really hit hard enough for it to make a point. Great actors, beautiful actors. But that’s about all.
