Watch TV with Paul Flynn
THOUGH IT PURPORTED to be about the hollow political ambitions of Payton Hobart, the boy who saw himself as US President from the age of seven, the first season of The Politician belonged to Gwyneth Paltrow. In the wry, well-heeled and extremely chatty drama – there is a lot of dialogue going on here – she plays Payton’s mother, Georgina. The part is an expandable riff on Gwyneth at her Gwyniest.
Lounging around sleek, monied Santa Barbara backdrops, sporting a sensational wardrobe and the best skin ever, Georgina offers borderline clueless wisdoms as to how life might improve; the kind of tart aphorisms that may or may not hold a seedling of truth in them somewhere, but will always sound modern in the retelling. That Paltrow’s husband, Brad Falchuk, was involved in the creation of Georgina Hobart bordered on the sinister, but the actor’s strategic message cut through: OK, she gets the joke.
Her role didn’t feel so much a stunt casting as the sly ace in The Politician’s hand, a useful glamour tangent to offset Ben Platt’s Payton, a complicated figure. I’d gone into the first season imagining a few latent Trump-isms. But Hobart is his own dystopian metaphor for political fortunehunting in an ongoing quest for the White House mired by money. He’s not crazy, he’s empty. At the climax of the first season, a surprise appearance by Bette Midler threatened to fully campify the story.
It’s here that we enter season two, with a bicoastal shift from California to New York. Platt now looks age-appropriate in the role of Payton, as he twists and turns his political persona to win a Senate seat against a tough blonde with two major skeletons in her closet. Georgina has honed her sleek preposterousness while pursuing her own environmental agenda back home, as Bette sidles into view as a campaign manager with neon sunglasses in New York. Everything moves with wise-cracking momentum, Payton’s team finding novel ways to make their candidate electable. There’s very little to dislike in this picture.
For round two of The Politician’s caucus, Bette looks very much like President, Gwyneth the First Lady and Platt a noble Secretary of State. Frankly, compared to the current state of US politics, you’d give them each a job on the back of it.
Begins Friday, Netflix