I've been glued to all eight episodes of the TV Show "Gaslit" and I love it - easily the best thing on telly that is inexplicably not getting the serious crave-rave credits it so richly deserves.
Whatever you may have thought of Julia Roberts as an actress before this (token Glamourpuss in the Ocean movies) - she is Emmy brilliant in "Gaslit" as the boozed-up/pilled-popping addicted-to-the-spotlight Martha Mitchell - the Republican wife-stroke-motormouth who sent Nixon's administration into near meltdown during the Watergate break-in scandals of 1972 and 1973 and the Commander-In-Chief's impending impeachment in 1974 - the first sitting President to be disgraced as such.
Returned with a historical landslide electoral victory in 1972, Republican President Richard Milhous Nixon (nicknamed Tricky Dicky) was riding high despite the calamitous Vietnam War. But after his trashing at the hands of a young and handsome JFK in the early Sixties - his deeply rooted paranoia towards failure meant his win would be very short-lived (he didn't need to do any of it but simply couldn't help himself). So despite genuine political achievements in China and elsewhere, Richard N is now forever remembered as that trickster in the late Seventies Frost/Nixon interviews - a liar hustling for public redemption via TV and crocodile tears (you never actually get to see any actor play Dicky, but he festers in the background like a malignant disease).
Martha Mitchell and her story is shocking at times – her treatment at the hands of unscrupulous men both repulsive and desperately sad – her own junkie-need for fame being a part of it. In getting this descent across - Roberts has at last found her perfect partner/foil in Sean Penn who is virtually unrecognizable via jowl make-up similar to Gary Oldman in "Darkest Hour". Their sparring bouts of devotion and hatred are unbelievably good – a fantastic chemistry that works even with all the prosthetics – a simpatico similar in fact to Steve Carell and Jennifer Aniston in the brilliant first season of "The Morning Show". Penn plays her snakelike politically wily and ruthless husband Bob Mitchell who along with John Erlichmann and John Deane was all knee-deep in wanton public lies, campaign office bugging of the Democrats and constitutional abuse of power on a massive scale.
But while the big-name stars Penn and Roberts are never anything other than electrifying when on screen - they are both given a good run for their professional money by Dan Stevens and the gorgeous Betty Gilpin (of Glee fame) playing another husband/wife power couple of the day - John and Maureen Deane. At last our Dan gets to shed the shackles of his goodie-two-shoes Downton Abbey character and get all creep, skin crawl and morally slippery - both he and Gilpin digging into real acting meat and going for it.
Deane quickly twigged that the ship was going down fast and you either drown or push into the lifeboats no matter what it takes. Worse, his small-beer inner-sanctum position in the quagmire of illegal Nixon activities starts to get used by the Whitehouse as an 'obstruction of justice' scapegoat. Deane is literally surrounded by cigar-chomping Chivas Regal-swilling white men desperate to point the finger of blame somewhere else and knowing just how to do it. The scenes in an out-of-the-way Camp David (the President's private getaway ranch) where their characters feel like invited diners at a banquet with political Gods are brilliant and so naivety believable (Washington has shockingly not been entirely honest with them – Tricky Dicky included). Like the two more famous leads - both Stevens and Gilpin should be nominated for outstanding performances.
Other notables are Chris Bauer as the nervous and clumsy break-in oaf James McCord, Brian Geraghty as a heavy-handed handy-with-a-syringe CIA agent, Allison Tolman as Martha's sceptical but admiring biographer, Darby Camp as Martha and John's frazzled but opinionated daughter, Hamish Linklater as a Whitehouse shapeshifter and Chris Messina (of The Newsroom fame and the movie The Giant Mechanical Man) with Carlos Valdes as diligent cops trying to make a difference. And of course there's stunning writing from Robbie Pickering, Sam Esmail and Leon Neyfakh who based this 2022 TV Show on an Apple Podcast from November 2017 called Slow Burn by Slate Plus.
But they may all be nosed at the Emmy Kentucky Derby race posts by a truly scene-stealing tour-de-force performance from "Boardwalk Empire" and "Perry Mason" sidekick - Shea Whigham. Whigham (who you've seen in so many movies, you may not know his name, but you'll know his face) is what I call the Denholm Elliott factor in a film or a TV Series. Whigham classes things up in his understated every-man kind of way. His persona/range has you root for a character no matter what he says or does or how odious the little cretin becomes as he burrows into the muck.
But in "Gaslit" - our Shea gets to go out on a total actor's limb. Whigham plays the (real life) butt-tight cropped-moustache-loon that is G. Gordon Liddy – an Adolf devotee who spouts Ayrian master-race psychobabble to all and sundry dumb enough to listen - including his equally devoted/misguided wife and bamboozled kids. The thing is that the Republicans knew of his violent and volatile rep, but still brought him in. It was Liddy who had headed up the crew of useless break-in types (that included Cubans who were considered to be disposable), who, of course, did the one thing you mustn't do when screwing your political opponents - get caught.
Soon everything that's ruthless and nasty in Washington starts to unravel - the press-hounds begin to close in and sniff out bigger game, while righteously incensed judges in open court proceedings dole out jail sentences that aren't measured in weeks but example-setting decades. And on it goes to Liddy (Whigham) literally doing battle with a rat and his delightful deposits...
Season 6 of "Better Call Saul" has been brilliant, as has Season 2 of "Gentleman Jack" - masterclasses in filming, acting, presentation, storytelling and all the sexy points in-between. But spare a thought for the Seventies when genuinely corrupted no-conscience-whatsoever types roamed the corridors of power thinking they would always get away it because their Congressional overlords contained (within their ranks) even bigger bottom-feeders than them.
"Gaslit" is brilliant stuff and if it ever turns up on BLU RAY - I'll wiretap 10 Downing St. to get a copy...
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