Sean Penn plays US attorney-general and Nixon ally John Mitchell alongside Julia Roberts as his socialite wife Martha in Gaslit.Credit:Hilary Bronwyn Gayle
Entry to both this milieu and the resulting story is provided by Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts),the southern socialite wife of Nixon’s best friend,campaign fixer and attorney-general,John Mitchell (Sean Penn,carrying some serious prosthetic jowls). Proclaimed “the Mouth from the South”,complete with aTime magazine cover and television chat show appearances,she’s a crafty proto-influencer who wields her profile for mischief until she realises that her husband and Nixon are involved in criminal political sabotage.
Martha,who loves to gossip with journalists,is delicious company. “If that gets me barred off Air Force One I will fly commercial,” she pledges after dropping another revelation to the media. Roberts is a hoot,giving a knowing performance as a woman giving a knowing performance,right up to the moment where knowledge of the apprehended Watergate burglars gets Martha held prisoner in a California hotel suite by private security,lest she tell the world that one of the arrested,James McCord (Chris Bauer),worked for John.
Martha is ignored,demeaned and eventually brutalised by her captors. “Good girl,” one tells her,and that’s how power switches inGaslit:with menacing suddenness. With weekly episodes streaming on Stan*,the show makes you laugh right up until you start wincing. Creator Robbie Pickering,a graduate ofMr Robot,sees history as a collision of distinct individuals,unaware of what they’re doing. There is no great man at the centre,Nixon is heard but not seen,so the supporting players come into focus.
Some are flat-out nuts. “I don’t experience human neuroses,” claims the leader of the Watergate burglars,G. Gordon Liddy (Shea Whigham),a former FBI agent who believes he’s in a war against vast evil and has cunning plans worthy ofBlackadder. Whigham’s performance is deadpan deranged,but not unfounded. After his Watergate jail term,Liddy did the media rounds – as a child I saw him onThe Mike Walsh Show,where he distinguished himself from John Michael Howson by telling daytime viewers about covert assassinations.
Martha (Julia Roberts,left) loves to gossip with journalists. “If that gets me barred off Air Force One I will fly commercial,” she pledges after dropping another revelation.Credit:Hilary Bronwyn Gayle
Pickering and director Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic) often cast comedians as henchmen,so that the White House cover-up is both malignant and farcical as the likes of Patton Oswalt play conniving presidential aides,while FBI director L. Patrick Gray (John Lynch) literally prays not to be caught as he sells out his own investigating agents by passing their findings back to his boss. These scenes are hilarious,but also feel authentic. A daft,illegal plan got green lit,or someone did a favour for their high-up. Grand events are just everyday mishaps.
John Dean,who came out of Watergate with a whisteblower’s reputation,is a slippery proposition here,happy to have his Porsche and a White House office until he has to get his hands dirty in the cover-up;he dodges responsibility like a high school student with a late assignment. His budding,corrective relationship with Mo contrasts with the slow implosion of the Mitchell’s marriage,which founders on John choosing Nixon over his wife. John can’t understand why she won’t accept what is happening,while the storytelling smartly asks Martha to weigh her complicity.