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neuralclone Well I finally finished watching "Washington Behind Closed Doors" (1977), a thinly veiled re-telling of the Nixon administration. I'll make no secret of the fact I began watching it for Robert Vaughn, who won a well-deserved Emmy for playing political fixer and all-round Bad Guy, Frank Flaherty. (Jason Robards, who played Nixon analogue President Monckton, was also nominated, but alas! he didn't win.) However, much as I enjoyed these two every time they appeared in a scene, I had problems with the series as a whole.
Firstly, it was too long, and a lot of the length appeared to be padding. I'm talking in particular about the amount of time the series devoted to the romantic relationships of various supporting characters. I suspect that the writers and producers put these sub-plots in in order to give the female half of the audience something to relate to. To me it was like adding a heavy dash of soap-opera to my political thriller--no, come to think of it, not soap opera. Women characters do interesting things to drive the plot along in soap operas. Now if Monckton's largely invisible wife had been the power behind the throne, and the wife of the head of the CIA had been blackmailing the director of the FBI, that would have been a soap opera.
As it was, I wanted more political chicanery and corruption on my screen as I slogged through all the troubled marriage subplots.
Secondly, the story lacked focus, the narrative point of view being spread among too many secondary characters. And this was particularly annoying when it came to my two favourite schemers, President Monckton and his top aide and confidante Frank Flaherty. The first two episodes of this six-part miniseries was setting Frank up as the true power behind the throne: he had the White House staff under his thumb and he was filtering all the information getting through to the president who couldn't be bothered reading reports. And then... Frank more or less disappears for the rest of the series as other charaqcters drift to centre stage. Honestly, it felt like Chekov's gun had been placed, with great ceremony, on the mantlepiece, and then left conspicuously NOT being fired.
What a missed opportunity! They could have created an absolutely riveting story with Monckton being an increasingly paranoid and angry puppet, and Flaherty being the puppeteer holding his strings. Oh, I do get it. They wanted to re-tell the story of Watergate from behind the scenes. And that leads me to...
... Lastly, having gone through nine hours of long complicated story, with subplot being added to subplot, they bring the series to a halt... with the capture of the "Watergate" burglars. Or rather, the fictional version of same. So we never got to see the political ramifications of everything that happened, or watch Monckton's house of cards fall.
Well, "Washington Behind Closed Doors" was made in 1977, when the events it fictionalised were more current events than history. And on a positive note: as a "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." fan I got to see Robert Vaughn doing a star turn as a villain, and as a "Dark Shadows" fan I got to see Thayer David, David Selby and Lara Parker in supporting roles. Really at times it felt as if the monsters of Collinwood and the agents of U.N.C.L.E. had taken over Washington... but that would be an entirely different crossover!
Firstly, it was too long, and a lot of the length appeared to be padding. I'm talking in particular about the amount of time the series devoted to the romantic relationships of various supporting characters. I suspect that the writers and producers put these sub-plots in in order to give the female half of the audience something to relate to. To me it was like adding a heavy dash of soap-opera to my political thriller--no, come to think of it, not soap opera. Women characters do interesting things to drive the plot along in soap operas. Now if Monckton's largely invisible wife had been the power behind the throne, and the wife of the head of the CIA had been blackmailing the director of the FBI, that would have been a soap opera.
As it was, I wanted more political chicanery and corruption on my screen as I slogged through all the troubled marriage subplots.
Secondly, the story lacked focus, the narrative point of view being spread among too many secondary characters. And this was particularly annoying when it came to my two favourite schemers, President Monckton and his top aide and confidante Frank Flaherty. The first two episodes of this six-part miniseries was setting Frank up as the true power behind the throne: he had the White House staff under his thumb and he was filtering all the information getting through to the president who couldn't be bothered reading reports. And then... Frank more or less disappears for the rest of the series as other charaqcters drift to centre stage. Honestly, it felt like Chekov's gun had been placed, with great ceremony, on the mantlepiece, and then left conspicuously NOT being fired.
What a missed opportunity! They could have created an absolutely riveting story with Monckton being an increasingly paranoid and angry puppet, and Flaherty being the puppeteer holding his strings. Oh, I do get it. They wanted to re-tell the story of Watergate from behind the scenes. And that leads me to...
... Lastly, having gone through nine hours of long complicated story, with subplot being added to subplot, they bring the series to a halt... with the capture of the "Watergate" burglars. Or rather, the fictional version of same. So we never got to see the political ramifications of everything that happened, or watch Monckton's house of cards fall.
Well, "Washington Behind Closed Doors" was made in 1977, when the events it fictionalised were more current events than history. And on a positive note: as a "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." fan I got to see Robert Vaughn doing a star turn as a villain, and as a "Dark Shadows" fan I got to see Thayer David, David Selby and Lara Parker in supporting roles. Really at times it felt as if the monsters of Collinwood and the agents of U.N.C.L.E. had taken over Washington... but that would be an entirely different crossover!
