Gaslit

Engrave an Emmy for Julia Roberts. She comes out blazing in this riveting series about loud and proud Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell (Sean Penn) who found herself discredited as a delusional drunk for speaking the truth about Watergate.

Funny, tragic, scary, creepy, wild, insane. Hey, what's not to like?

Roberts’ all-in performance and those of her co-stars, especially Allison Tolman (“Downward Dog”) as a sympathetic reporter and Shea Whigham as an accurately unhinged G. Gordon Liddy, are a delight, and the whole endeavor is entertaining enough to recommend.

All together, through the seven episodes made available for critics, “Gaslit” is a handsome limited series about a particularly ugly American sensibility.

Gaslit has taken its ample ingredients and turned them into a very good, very watchable drama that steadily finds its feet.

The overblown nature of it all matches both Mitchell’s larger-than-life charisma and the cartoonish incompetence of the egotistical politicians. It is also bolstered by a sharply written and surprisingly funny script that magnifies everyone’s flaws grotesquely.

We didn't need another traditional retelling of Watergate, and we certainly didn't need another allegorical fable about how Western democracy is going down the pan. But an under-told scandalous story told through a genuinely funny lens? Yes please.

For those who like to get into the nitty-gritty of history, this is illuminating stuff. And at the centre of it all is Roberts, flashing that megawatt smile and bringing depth to the depiction of a woman who in her day was often reduced to caricature.

The series can be watched as dance, a pair of alternating actorly pas de deux, set off by ensemble pieces, and is completely enjoyable as such. ... Roberts and Penn do so well playing people in love, when they’re in love, that you don’t care who they are, historically.

It’s a taut, stylishly shot thriller that finds horror in unblinking submission, groupthink, and the sexist dynamics too easily reinforced by the mainstream media’s coverage of outspoken female figures.

Overpacked but compelling.

Although later episodes lose their way a bit, the majority of "Gaslit" is a surprisingly fun romp through a dark period of American history that also manages to avoid being too light-hearted.

Both actors [Roberts and Penn] are delivering true character performances, and they’re absolutely electric together. And while the primary focus of this darkly funny, broadly melodramatic and well-paced series is on Martha and John, “Gaslit” is equally involving when the viewpoint shifts to the myriad of colorful and often comically corrupt characters who deepened the Swamp that has yet to be drained to this day.

Gaslit is a wickedly entertaining and irreverent look at an infamous slice of American history that none of these characters are particularly proud to be a part of.

Setting a high bar for HBO's upcoming "The White House Plumbers," Gaslit looks at Watergate from the perspectives of several key players, deriving its title from the horrid treatment of Martha Mitchell. Losing a bit of momentum down the stretch thanks in part to its diffused storylines and semi-satirical tone, it's still an extremely well-cast look at the presidential scandal that made the suffix "gate" part of our lexicon.

While the show does deliver an emotional, often visceral take on Martha’s torment and psychological unraveling, it also finds itself, much like Nixon’s presidency, overshadowed by the surrounding idiocy.

Uneven but watchable ... Roberts makes Martha Mitchell compelling, moving from caustic and charming to terrified. ... Penn is also effective, despite the padding and makeup.

“Gaslit” can struggle to make a smooth change quirky to gut-wrenching, but the series effectively takes the events of Watergate—and many of its behind-the-scenes people—out from the shadows.

One only wishes creator Robbie Pickering had found a better way to balance this trio of intertwined stories. For in trying to juggle all three, he’s created a lopsided triangle that can give you tonal whiplash when you try to follow along, the sum never really jelling any of its sometimes brilliant parts.

Martha's story is a fascinating one — the administration's early effort to keep her quiet led to a brutal imprisonment — and Roberts gamely plays her as an old-fashioned southern matriarch unleashed at the dawn of our age of paranoia. But the show also stretches to tell the way less involving story of White House Counsel John Dean (Dan Stevens) and his romance with liberal flight attendant Mo (Betty Gilpin).

The entire time I watched Gaslit, I ricocheted between thinking it was a thought-provoking series full of memorable performances and that it was a terrible series that too frequently felt like a Saturday Night Live skit. More often than not, though, it felt like the series may be gaslighting me.

Stream it, but only for the performances of Roberts, Penn and the rest of the cast of Gaslit. The series leans too hard on the farcical to help viewers come away with any real information about the Republican side of the Watergate scandal.

"Gaslit" is a little dull, the light of its stars muddled under a huge cast and the heavy weight of history, which it reveals in uneven starts and stops. Over the course of the seven episodes given for review, it sparks the most when the minor characters are allowed to take the stage.

It’s intermittently engaging but never quite sensational.

“Gaslit” makes some clever choices — among them to not depict the president at all, at least in its first seven episodes. ... It takes nothing away from Roberts’ fine work to say that her scenes with Penn are not the show’s strongest. ... The show’s best scenes depict a couple on the other side of marital collapse: John Dean, the White House Counsel, and his wife Mo. ... John and Mo are, perhaps, the only characters we see who don’t know they’re on a TV show about Watergate.

Not even Roberts’s blistering portrayal of a woman terrorised into silence is enough to save a drama that is somehow both plodding and overreaching.

[Gaslit] would like to reconfigure this notorious historical saga as a case study in sexist marginalization. Too bad, then, that it lacks the focus, and perspective, necessary to make such a case, which might have been better achieved had the eight-installment affair been conceived as a two-hour movie, minus all the diversions that turn it into an aimless slog.