This is the Nixon Whitehouse with the expletives deleted, but somehow manages to be just as menacing and obscene, thanks to the acting of Jason Robarts and Robert Vaughn and other excellent actors. But Nicholas Pyor (Hank Ferris) as the weak, ambitious, amoral, eternally scared director of communications is a masterful piece of acting. He is alternately scared, full of hubris and fragile self-confidence, willing to do anything to please his bosses,then self-doubting. He deserved an Oscar. It is indeed a comic performance and a comedy of manners as another reviewer rightly pointed out. One blemish is that the women all seem hopelessly weak and fickle. Sally Whalen breaks her own rule about not getting involved with a married man and then lives to regret it. The girl with the strangely intense blue eyes (whose name I forget) falls hopelessly for the philandering Roger Castle and seems unable for far too long to see him for what he is. Again, Hank Ferris's inept attempts emulate Castle are wonderfully realized. The real Nixon was somewhat more complex than the TV drama manages to portray. For example, the scene where President Monkton goes out the talk to the Vietnam War protesters is portrayed as a scheme got up by the Pryor character as a cynical ploy, whereas in reality it was Nixon's own idea, it took place at night when he was unable to sleep and obviously, within his own rather severe limitations, sincere. Perhaps it was thought that to portray that would obscure the main theme of the drama. Truth often does. Not much to put against the tens of thousands of deaths in Vietnam and Cambodia, but he was not quite as one-sided as the fictional version. And at last the series is available on DVD, via Amazon.com.
Review of Washington: Behind Closed Doors
