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This article contains spoilers. Major events detailed in The Comey Rule (Sky Atlantic, Wed., 9 p.m.), a four-part political drama of brilliant and bloated seriousness, based on former FBI Director James Comey’s self-esteemed book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, will take place between 2015 and 2017. (Parts one and two were screened this Wednesday; three and four are next week).
Given the grueling cycle of enraged, depressing, and absurd events since then, that now looks like ancient history. So much so, in fact, that this brief and tumultuous period in American politics may now seem picturesque enough to anyone who has a working Twitter account or who has spent five minutes watching this week’s American presidential debate.
It begins with an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as Secretary of State, a thorough and tedious fiasco that Comey doggedly and publicly pursued, likely damaging her run for the White House in the home stretch. .
It ends with Comey’s testimony before the United States Senate, shortly after his abrupt dismissal by Donald Trump following the FBI investigation into Russia and, notoriously, Comey’s reluctance to promise Trump anything less conditional than the ” honest loyalty “.
Yet what does the show owe to Comey, here played by Jeff Daniels as a judgmental Dudley Do-Right? Is this description of Comey as a tragic hero whose fatal flaw, it seems, was unwavering fairness, an honest assessment? Or one loyal to Comey’s huge estimate?
Jeff Daniels as James Comey
In an initial lame attempt at a critical distance, writer-director Billy Ray casts a rare Rod Rosenstein (Scoot McNairy) as something of a resentful storyteller: a bitter and awkward Salieri complaining about Comey’s “braggart,” straight. , person-person Mozart.
That rings as true as the altruistic seriousness smeared throughout these accumulated three and a half hours, smeared with stellar performances (Michael Kelly’s Man G, Andrew McCabe, Michael Kelly’s scowl, Holly’s folk / salty Sally Yates Hunter), performed mostly in dimly lit rooms and wood paneling, and given the somber tones of concerned stringed instruments.
These, the hallmarks of solemn political dramas, are difficult to reconcile completely with a plot that must give due attention to an FBI director trying to disappear into a curtain, to repeated intelligence briefings on the mechanics of the “golden showers” and a gold-plated street vendor. that gave the world Miss Universe, The Apprentice and just a moment of peace.
And that’s it. The show seems to yearn for a time of good, clear American values (where Hunter’s Yates will deliver heinous and patronizing scenes extolling America’s “best me”) and even clean American scandals, where the FBI worries about cell phones and hard drives. confiscated. all summoned with such harsh moralization and such simple self-satisfaction that you actually start supporting the monster.
He appears, after the same kind of delay that Spielberg once reserved for the arrival of sharks or T-Rexes, until well into the third episode in the fearsome form of Brendan Gleeson.
Now, first things first. It is impossible for someone to do a serious performance like Donald Trump. This is a figure both far beyond parody and still very short of reality. Simply emulating his hairstyle is ridiculing him.
Like an impressionist, Gleeson must work from the outside in (the oyster-picking lips, the random and violent speech patterns) because Trump has no interiority to understand. “I saw you on television,” he frequently approves, a creature of pure surface. Gleeson’s Trump, more grumpy mobster than Troll-in-Chief, is funny and hideous, just like the man himself.
To enjoy the performance, then, is to feel defeated. Trump has so successfully corrupted and degraded the politics he thus displays, so focused on seriousness, that it feels like an anachronism.
No one needs to revisit the toothless shorthand satire of Saturday Night Live, but one wonders what Adam McKay, Vice’s most rugged director, could have done with similar material.
This program, which begins its broadcast, coincidentally, the same day that Comey reappeared before a vengeful Republican Senate, finally appeals to the endurance of American decency. But it’s hard to say that you honestly believe in him.
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