MrsD. and I both (seperately, this was ~15-years before we met) obsessively watched the broadcast Watergate hearings in 1973, and so we did indeed find this riveting. Which makes me suspect that johnny foreigner would find it less so. Anyway, this is one of those exceedingly rare instances where improbable stuntcasting + extreme prosthetics combine into a believable character (starring Sean Penn as former US AG John Mitchell, making the exercise doubly unbelievable except -- it works!). The central story is powerfully delivered until dissipated in later episodes with filler.

Don't know whether you ever heard National Lampoon's "Missing White House Tapes" which was an LP (if you remember them) from 1973. There's a sketch called "Mission Impeachable" where E Howard Hunt is instructed to act against the Democratic Party who are seeking to seize power by legitimate means. At risk are the plans of the Republicans which are listed as including "packing the Supreme Court with right wing morons".

Strikes me that the only really shocking thing about Trump and his gaggle of alt-right, mega-corporation, evangelical nut-jobs is that they're actually prepared to do what The republicans have said they'll do for years. Nixon was timid by comparison.

Nixon and Trump both received coaching in machiavellianism from Roy Cohn.

Probably true. I admit that I find it difficult to understand somebody like Cohn, in the sense of having any empathy with him, or recognising his motivation as something I might share. This may be a failing, but I genuinely wonder whether some people are actually human in any real sense.

His eyes are dead in photographs.
 

I guess sociopathy is its own motivation. MrsD. and I were debating whether you could tell if someone is criminal or dangerous from a photo, media stereotypes, and ethnic factors in appearance that have been cast as movie villains, after a news story about a locally wanted serial killer suspect. I already 'knew' he was a suspect (from the story), but thought he looked pretty scary, albeit in a classic mugshot (he was smirking eerily, I thought). Mrs. said he looks like her cousins, who are/were at worst, stoners and layabouts.

This looks right up my alley, thanks.