Zero Day

Sometimes, you can watch a series set in ostensible reality and say, “That could not happen.” It’s absurd. Inane. And “Let’s watch another episode.” Such is the case with “Zero Day,” in which characters do things they never would and the public acts in ways that defy belief, while at the same time the premise is compellingly sound. And the story becomes impossible to let go.

Handsomely made, politically prescient and packing some serious star power, Zero Day makes up for a meandering middle with two properly thrilling final episodes.

As we start to see more of the conspiracy unfold, and the players emerge from the shadows, the plot twists will have the audience questioning what they think they know. But one thing is never in doubt: President Mullen is the man we’d all want in our corner in a crisis.

An astonishing amount of fun – firmly grounded by De Niro and his portrait of a good man struggling to do the right thing in a world that offers corruption at worst, and only compromise at best.

It almost feels as if we’re racing to the finish line in the finale, with certain plot points and characters getting tied up in too-convenient fashion, and some questions still hovering over the proceedings as we fade to black. Still, “Zero Day” is a timely and thought-provoking slice of alternate political reality, with the great De Niro in commanding form.

It has the aesthetics of a weighty political drama with the soul of an airport paperback. It's like a high-end version of Designated Survivor. If your expectations are set at "fun," not "important" or "great," you will have a good time.

The cast of Zero Day is the main reason why we’re going to keep watching, but the final moments of the first episode gave the story more intrigue than what we’ve seen from terrorism thrillers in the recent past.

It does it well, for the most part. Part political statement, part soap opera, the series gains momentum as it goes along, and toward the end there are a few plot developments for which, at any other time in history, the reaction would be: Too on the nose.

Zero Day aims high and comes up short of the heights of shows like Homeland, but at six episodes, it manages to be thrilling without overstaying its welcome.

“Zero Day” ultimately lacks any defining elements that could render it, at minimum, a memorable six-episode experience. However, the energy and momentum never lag to the point that switching over to anything else feels needed.

“Zero Day” is another TV series that shoulda been a movie. Or maybe a four-hour series, but six hours is too much.

It’s entertaining, in that old-fashioned way, if not as witty as they used to make them, but the cast, being superior to the material, keep things convincing enough. .... “Zero Day” does grow a little exhausted, a little wobbly, as it nears the finish line.

"Zero Day" deserves some credit for voicing serious concerns about the world (and country) we've built for ourselves, but in the end, it doesn't have much to say.

De Niro is an odd fit for that sort of profile; he’s too gruff, too shaggy to convincingly play such a blandly stalwart, stolid figure. The show around him similarly struggles to turn Mullen into a convincing vessel for its sweeping, pacific message.

Having seen all six episodes, I can also warn you that the set-up is far better than the pay-off. The main reason to keep watching is De Niro, whose star power drives the show. Enjoy watching a master at work, even if he looks as if he could do this stuff in his sleep.

Unfortunately, all the status in the world can’t save it from also being a muddled, labored, suspense-challenged washout.

Despite the better efforts of De Niro, Caplan and the rest of the surprisingly stacked ensemble, Zero Day can never really escape the fact it's not full enough to justify its series length.

Both plausible and contrived, “Zero Day” is sharply informed by real world trends but unbalanced by trying to cram too many hot-button elements into a six-episode melodrama.

“Zero Day” invites many such quandaries without offering much in the way of satisfying answers.

Unfortunately, beyond the casting excitement (and a standout performance by Plemons) and despite all of the high, of-the-moment political stakes and cliffhanger twists, Zero Day feels more like a slog than a gripping thriller that reflects these crazy times.

So vivid is Zero Day’s evocation of contemporary corruption and unrest that its evasiveness on political affiliations plunges it into the realm of the uncanny. We get the sense that Americans were agitated long before the attack, though details remain murky.

It starts off with a decently exciting disaster premise, but quickly starts to feel dull and repetitive in its red tape bureaucracy and political machinations.

Robert De Niro, as a former POTUS with integrity, shines in his first crack at series TV, but the double Oscar winner and an A-list cast (love Jesse Plemons) are trapped in a muddled, political thriller about cyber terrorism that is nowhere near as smart as it thinks it is .

At its best, it's only boring. At its worst, it presents a nonsensical vision of bipartisan unity and makes dumb decisions about practically everything from plot motivations to the reality of a massive cyberattack. You're better off watching (or rewatching) Mr. Robot.

Mullen’s positions and policies are obscured to the point of irrelevancy. And when the few convictions he does espouse are violated, neither the show nor Mullen himself seem to register the contradiction as a moral injury significant enough to require real redress.

The series hangs on De Niro’s star power, but he doesn’t have that much to do. For every rousing speech Mullen makes, he has to spend long stretches staring into the middle distance while we are left to guess what’s on his mind.

It has limited capacity to surprise, limited interest in provoking, limited ability to entertain. There are worse things in life than watching Robert De Niro’s face for six episodes, but he is let down by material that turns the tortured role of president into a caricature of American earnestness.

Interesting idea, otherwise deadly dull.

De Niro looks bored and Bassett has been asked to do little more than appear serious and concerned in a few scenes. It’s surprising to see the talents of two of Hollywood’s most skillful actors squandered, but that’s true of the cast as a whole, who aren’t asked to play characters so much as chess pieces. And the writing is clunky.

It’s a show that never reconciles its ridiculous character choices with its political commentary, a soap opera that wants to be “important” too. This is not to say that a show can’t be a conversation starter and a thriller at the same time, only that “Zero Day” is neither.

Mostly, any flicker of emotional complexity gets trampled by the plot as it barrels forward in five different directions at once. A whole lot happens in Zero Day, it’s true… but I can’t say I cared much about any of it.

What we get instead is a pundit-brained muddle designed to exploit national anxieties while studiously avoiding any hint of a point of view, riffing on recognizable figures but ignoring the context that produced them.

Mullen becomes one of the most trusted people in this country based on a cult of personality, a carefully curated image that he expects the American public to accept because he tells them so. With that uncritical treatment of a man whose most defining characteristic is his aura, Zero Day falls exactly into the trap that it’s ostensibly warning its viewers against.

A flat, nonsensical clunker that, at six episodes, somehow feels both draggy and rushed at the same time.

The show gets lost in its own navel-gazing plot and cardboard characters, quickly stranding its leading man in a quagmire of clichés that even he can’t sell.

Wastes an undeniably spectacular cast on a fundamentally silly and unrealistic story that badly wants to be taken as serious and realistic. The truth is that the cast is too good for Zero Day not to be watchable, but its self-congratulatory conviction that it’s far smarter than it actually is makes it hard to embrace on more than a speculative “What are all these people doing here?” level.

It's dangerous putting the word "zero" in your title because all I can think of is that I have zero interest in this story, zero thought about it after I've watched it and zero recommendations for anyone else to tune in.