Justin Theroux And Woody Harrelson Light Up HBO’s New Watergate Comedy

There’s a scene in the new HBO political comedy White House Plumbers where ex-CIA agent E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and his wife Dorothy (Lena Headey) pay a social visit to Hunt’s new partner G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) and his family. It starts out awkward, with Liddy’s brood of children lined up on the steps like some bizarre aping of the Von Trapp family. It gets worse when Liddy, instead of playing music, plays records of Adolf Hitler’s speeches, blaring so loud that nobody can hear one another speak.

Howard and Dorothy are visibly uncomfortable the entire time, but Gordon and his wife, Fran (Judy Greer) seem blissfully unaware of just how weird this all is. Of course, Howard is no normal dude, either. He’s a growling, impatient, red-blooded American who writes romance novels on the side and grumbles about ‘leftist’ propaganda when he sees a Time magazine in his son’s room.

As you can see in the image above, there’s also a scene in the show’s opening episode where both men dress up in absolutely ridiculous disguises in order to case a burglary sight in Los Angeles—hence the title of the series premiere, ‘The Beverly Hills Burglary.’

I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect when I turned this show on last night. I like political shows. I find the Watergate scandal which this one focuses on fascinating—one of the most absurd, insane political scandals in American history. And I love both Justin Theroux (The Leftovers) and Woody Harrelson (True Detective) in just about everything they do.

Here, both men ham it up more than I’ve ever seen them. Harrelson juts out his chin when he speaks to the point that I worry about his jaw. He’s made his voice more gravelly than it normally is, and deeper. He’s all sandpaper and smoke.

Theroux, meanwhile, is in rare form. His mustachioed G. Gordon Liddy is prim and proper and a bit of a dandy, with a Mid-Atlantic accent that makes him come across as preposterously pompous. Voice and drama professor Dudley Knight once said of this accent that “its earliest advocates bragged that its chief quality was that no Americans actually spoke it unless educated to do so.” That sounds about right.

The pair are at once polar opposites and perfect for one another. An ongoing debate in the series premiere is whether to call their activities “black ops” or “black bag” (a character later says “black bag ops”). Their antics are often hilarious, including one botched tail-job that results in Liddy spilling two cups of hot coffee on himself and wailing in pain.

“No names were changed to protect the innocent because almost everyone was found guilty” the introductory text reads. It’s not hard to see why these buffoons were caught, though obviously this is a reimagining of true events rather than an accurate history of what led to the downfall of Richard Nixon.

The limited series was created and written by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck and directed by David Mandel, all Veep alumni. Along with its main stars, the cast is rounded out by Domhnall Gleeson (John Dean), Toby Huss (James McCord), Ike Barinholtz (Jeb Magruder), Kathleen Turner (Dita Beard), Kim Coates (Frank Sturgis), Yul Vazquez (Bernard “Macho” Barker) and many more.

So far, I’m really enjoying the off-kilter nature of the series, though I’ve only seen this first episode. Theroux and Harrelson are clearly having a lot of fun, and their weird characters and over-the-top performances make this an entertaining jaunt into America’s weird history.

The opening episode introduces us to these men and their operation, and gives us some backstory into how they started working together for Nixon and the Campaign To Re-Elect Nixon. Their “black ops bag” hijinks will continue for the next four weeks, and I’ll be reviewing here on this blog. Stay tuned.

What did you think of White House Plumbers? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.