Twenty-five years ago this month, viewers were halfway through the first season of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Released in the last embers of the Clinton presidency, the show was a paean to a form of grandstanding, liberal masculinity. For a generation of aspiring politicians, it shaped a view of what life in the White House could be like: a dignified moral crusade. It was, of course, a fantasy. A fantasy that is prolonged this week by Netflix’s equally wide-eyed thriller Zero Day.
Former president George Mullen (Robert De Niro) is living in quiet retirement, struggling with his memoirs. His sanctuary is interrupted by a malware cyberattack which takes down communications across America for one minute – a period in which 3,402 civilians die. The event is labelled “Zero Day”. As the country, led by President Mitchell (Angela Bassett), scrambles in the aftermath, Mullen is called upon to lead a commission investigating the attack and the threat it spelt out on every cellphone in the country: “THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.” Aided by lackey Roger (Jesse Plemons) and chief of staff Valerie (Connie Britton), and hindered by his firebrand congresswoman daughter Alex (Lizzy Caplan), Mullen – a feared prosecutor in his day – sets out to unravel a conspiracy that goes to the heart of the political and financial establishment.
