TV Review: The White House Plumbers was a bad idea - casting Watergate as a zany comedy

And on they went, spending a fortune to make one of the most lavishly awful first episodes I’ve watched in my life. All because there is no such thing as a bad idea.

A good idea would be to make it as a straight drama, because anything else would get in the way of an incredible story. In the real world, E Edward Hunt and G Gordon Liddy, former CIA and FBI operatives, formed a shadowy group to help president Richard Nixon fight his political enemies. It was called ‘The Plumbers’ because they stopped leaks, hence the title of the show.

They ended up getting caught breaking into the Democratic Party HQ in Watergate, Washington DC.

All those scandals that followed, such as Partygate in London, are named in tribute to this, the Big Daddy of political shockers.

And yet they decided to make this show look like a reboot of the National Lampoon movies. I was waiting for Chevy Chase to appear with a chicken on his head.

The first episode has Hunt and Liddy trying to dig up dirt on a whistleblower by breaking into his therapist’s office in LA. It’s a minor infraction, but hints at a deeper malaise in the regime that is fuelled by paranoia about communist agents.

A scene that should have taken two minutes ends up running on forever as Hunt and Liddy goof around in disguises as the director hits us over the head with, ‘look how stupid these amateurs are’.

The mission doesn’t go to plan, but Nixon likes the cut of their jib so they get promoted (this promotion is announced by a character played by Domhnall Gleeson, the only believable character in the first episode).

Here’s the problem with The White House Plumbers. Whatever else he was, Richard Nixon wasn’t an eejit. There is no way he could have observed Hunt and Liddy, as played here, and decided to hire them for sensitive projects.

Therefore I don’t believe this version of the Watergate scandal. And if you don’t believe a drama based on true-life, it’s in trouble.

The dinner-party scene, where Hunt and his wife visited Liddy and his wife, pushed me over the edge. In real life, Liddy liked the collected speeches of Adolf Hitler. This is played for laughs here, but isn’t remotely funny. Liddy ends up hanging out the first floor window, his feet dangling in front of Hunt and his wife downstairs, as Hitler roars away on the record player. It’s a bad idea. This whole show is a bad idea.