White House Plumbers

White House Plumbers was drily funny. Harrelson and Theroux had real chemistry and Hunt and Liddy’s growing bond in a confederacy of chaos was almost touching.

Watching their plans unravel is great fun. Perhaps too much of a lark, given Nixon’s tarnishing effect on the presidency. Americans may find it depressing – but for everyone else, it is a period hoot begging to be binged.

We live, though, in uniquely incompetent times, and one of the shows that best captures this fact is a work of stylized history. White House Plumbers. .... As with traditional treatments of competence, the story delights in the details, turning Watergate into a step-by-step origin story.

White House Plumbers doesn’t feel pointless. The show’s ensemble cast is electric, and there’s a surprising amount of visual style to boot. Theroux and Harrelson are both stellar, but it’s the show’s delicate depiction of their characters’ real-life buffoonery that will jolt and delight both history-class dropouts and Watergate buffs alike.

“Lineage is very important to Gordon. Even more so than intelligence,” his subservient wife Fran (national treasure Judy Greer) says in one of the miniseries’ many cheeky lines of dialogue. ... The most interesting people in this story are the ones not central to it.

“White House Plumbers” likely won’t go down as the definitive Watergate tale (though a voice in Episode 4 sure seems like a nod toward one classic film), and its tone may be too indefinite to attract average TV fans. (It’s a historical drama steeped in absurd humor, just as it’s a satire absent “Veep’s” laugh-a-minute leanings.) Still, each element is made with such obvious enthusiasm for the time, place, and central story that it’s hard not to admire how the five-hour oddity adds up.

While sometimes White House Plumbers finds it hard to satirize what is already ridiculous at face value, it still gets off some big laughs and is bolstered by the performances of Harrelson and Theroux.

White House Plumbers thus tells a clear, coherent story about a famous event in American history, and at just five episodes there's not much bloat to complain of (though it probably could've been made as a movie in an earlier era). But those viewers looking to cackle as they did with Veep probably won't get more than an occasional chuckle.

It’s often fascinating viewing. However, Liddy’s Nazi fascination is just one symptom of a larger tonal problem, as the show oftentimes feels a bit glib in exploring the events that unfold, especially the ones with shocking life-and-death consequences.

Don't come for a fresh perspective or revisionist history or faithful recounting. Do come for the laughs. "Plumbers" probably gets that part right anyway. ... Amusing, inconsequential.

Plenty of good work here. But one is left with the feeling there’s a terrific two-hour movie buried beneath this uneven five-part series.