Roberts among the letdowns

Gaslit Debuted Sunday, Crave

In the years before her death in 1976, just four years after the Watergate break-in, Martha Mitchell was more famous than Henry Kissinger. The spouses of attorneys general, then and now, tend to shrink from the cameras rather than run toward them. But the Arkansas native, nicknamed “the Mouth of the South,” wouldn't have it any other way.

She made the talk-show rounds, sometimes disagreeing with the Richard Nixon administration, from which her husband was eventually fired. Even after scandal broke out, John Mitchell stayed loyal to the president, but Martha saw no reason for that. She was Watergate's Cassandra, and duly paid the price.

And then she was mostly forgotten. The hit podcast Slow Burn, which retraced the conspiracy and coverup that led to Nixon's resignation, revived her story for Trump-era listeners and now serves as the inspiration for the new miniseries Gaslit, starring Julia Roberts as Martha. This oblique account of Watergate focuses on mostly ancillary figures — chiefly Martha, but also White House Counsel John Dean (Dan Stevens), conspirator G. Gordon Liddy (Shea Whigham) and hotel security guard Frank Wills (Patrick R. Walker). Betty Gilpin co-stars as Dean's unlikely love interest Mo, a flight attendant with left-of-centre politics, as does an unrecognizable Sean Penn as John Mitchell.

Stevens said that Gaslit means to tell the “human stories” behind Watergate. In nearly every aspect it fails. With Martha as the lone exception, the characters are cardboard cut-outs or cartoon villains. Whenever Martha's not onscreen, it's closer to a black comedy — the men behind the plot portrayed as bumbling, delusional fools — except it's flailingly unfunny.

Gaslit begins several months before the break-in, with Mitchell still Nixon's AG and Martha on TV, presented as “one of the most outspoken conservatives in Washington.” But the show never really conveys her beliefs — one of many softpedallings from creator Robbie Pickering to render his protagonist sympathetic. Seeing her on TV, Dean, who works for Martha's husband, calls her “an idiot and a lush” and the young woman he's just bedded sneers that she's “dressed up like a holiday ham.” But as Roberts plays her, Martha seldom appears as ridiculous or as out of control as other people say she is.

Martha's credibility is crucial here. Shortly after the burglary at Watergate, she travels to California with Mitchell, who abruptly leaves to tend to the burgeoning scandal. The remaining bodyguard (Brian Geraghty) forcefully prevents Martha from leaving her hotel room or receiving any news from the outside. After she's set free, many disbelieve her account of the kidnapping — a response to her craving for attention and occasional fudging of the truth that takes on darker undertones as the Watergate investigation continues.

Though they share a Southern heritage, Roberts simply feels miscast as Martha, to whom she bears no resemblance, physical or otherwise. Martha was willing to shuck her ladylike trappings — to be ugly and to say ugly things — in ways the actor evidently is not.