It's an event right here, having acting legend Robert De Niro, 81, take on his first major TV role in "Zero Day," a six-episode political thriller now streaming on Netflix.
In it, De Niro plays a former U.S. President who's widely respected as a leader you can trust. And before the script leaves him tangled in a hopeless muddle, the actor does the role proud.
Given De Niro's well-known criticism of the current occupant of the White House, you might be expecting a soap box. Relax. "Zero Day," sometimes to its detriment, is above all a suspense nailbiter backgrounded by a tech-obsessed America hooked on conspiracy theories.
The creative team is unimpeachable. Besides De Niro, leading an A-list cast, the series is the work of Eric Newman ("Narcos"), former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim and New York Times correspondent Michael S. Schmidt. And the director of every episode is the award-winning Lesli Linka Glatter, who knows the political disruptor turf from "Homeland."
Review: 'September 5' ignites like a ticking time bombDe Niro is in top form as ex-POTUS George Mullen, who's called out of retirement by current President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) to aid in a terror crisis. A sudden cyberattack, source unknown, has crippled the country with the malware, knocking out air and traffic control systems and causing the deaths of 3,402 citizens in just a minute.
Panic ensues with digital messages on everyone's smartphones warning that "this will happen again." Mitchell wants Mullen to head the Zero Day Commission, empowered by Congress to hunt down the perpetrators, with the legal right to grab people off the streets without warrants in a scary attack on civil liberties that echo the aftermath of 9/11.
Mullen's daughter Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan), twice elected to Congress, tells her father not to accept the job, citing that he's been out of politics too long to catch up. His wife Sheila (the great Joan Allen), in the running for a federal judgeship, counters that he's the only man capable of doing the job.
No party affiliations are mentioned in the script, but you'll have fun guessing.
Who's responsible for the cyber invasion? Is it the Russians? Or maybe it's an enemy within, such as tech billionaire Robert Lyndon (Clark Gregg), media giant Monica Kidder (Gaby Hoffmann), CIA Director Lasch (Bill Camp), House Speaker Richard Dreyer (Matthew Modine), or influential podcaster Evan Green (a terrific Dan Stevens), whom Mullen's chief adviser Roger Carlson, the reliably excellent Jesse Plemons, believes is not all he says he is.
"Zero Day" zips along excitingly when these topical issues are in dramatic play. It's the soap opera elements of the plot that drag it down, especially the references to the fatal drug overdose of the Mullens' son and the wedge the president's infidelities drove through his marriage and his relationship with his resentful daughter.
Another story thread that runs aground is the depiction of the former president's own state of mind. We watch him rise daily at his compound in Hudson, New York, taking a vigorous swim, walking his dog and looking the picture of heath.
But his mental abilities come into question when he accuses a long-time secret service agent of being an imposter.
Review: You have to see 'The White Lotus' season 3He also sees faces of the dead in a crowd and hears snatches of the Sex Pistols anthem "Who Killed Bambi," which trigger destabilizing hallucinations. A defunct government program called Proteus had similar mind control properties -- or has someone tampered with his meds?
No fear of spoilers since the series -- nowhere near as smart as it thinks it is -- dodges its deeper implications.
It's De Niro who holds us, indelibly probing this King Lear of politics who worries that age may be dulling his faculties but never his sense of right and wrong.
Even as "Zero Day" flounders to a close, De Niro takes to TV like he does to movies. He's a master of the game.
