The Watergate break-in and subsequent unraveling of Richard Nixon’s presidency had a profound impact on American politics, and an even greater impact on American filmmaking. Watergate popped the balloon of American exceptionalism—the idea that American politics was purer than anyone else’s. In doing so, it spawned a new genre of conspiracy thriller: neurotic blockbusters like The Parallax View and The Conversation.
Ironically, the real Watergate scandal was more of a free farce than a dagger in the heart of democracy. The black ops team that was spying on Nixon’s opponents hired a locksmith who couldn’t pick locks and then installed faulty bugging devices. It was a landslide of incompetence, a bacchanal of deceit. Maybe that’s why The Whitehouse Plumbers (Sky Atlantic), HBO’s animated retelling of the affair, exudes such contemporary vibes.
For all its rich period detail, The White House Plumbers feels like a thoroughly modern omnishamble. These operatives of the criminal Republican party – the so-called “fontanistes” – could have sprung from the imagination of the satirist Armando Iannucci. Unsurprisingly, the miniseries is written by two veterans of Iannucci’s VP comedy, Veep, Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck. The environment, where the politicians are inept, their lackeys even more so, is precisely the same.
There are also echoes of the weirder moments of Donald Trump’s presidency and even Partygate. A cast led by Woody Harrelson as E Howard Hunt, head of the Nixon campaign’s covert investigations unit, nods at these similarities with gusto.
