A cinematic guide to Watergate

This June will mark half a century since police arrested five of Richard Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington DC’s Watergate complex.

This anniversary appears to have given TV executives the impetus to commission a wave of shows about the break in and its world-changing (if not an overstatement) after-effects.

Both upcoming drama Gaslit (STARZ, from April 24th) and Netflix’s documentary The Martha Mitchell Effect concern the outspoken spouse of Nixon’s loyal Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who (to her husband’s ire) helped blow the whistle on Watergate.

For her efforts, Mitchell was hounded and vilified as a drunk by Nixon’s cronies, with the former President declaring to David Frost that ‘if it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate’.

Julia Roberts takes the role of Martha Mitchell in Gaslit whilst Sean Penn is her corrupted husband.

Also on the horizon is the HBO Mini-series The White House Plumbers, which takes a more comedic look at the antics of the bungling burglars.