This review contains spoilers for the first episode of Zero Day
Two political thrillers in two months? That’s odd. It gets even more peculiar when you discover both shows involve the president, a shady tech mogul, and a 1st episode twist. Now, I’m not suggesting Zero Day and Paradise are copying each other’s homework. Current TV production makes that hard to pull off. Instead, these both feel like shows attempting to speak to our current time. Where Zero Day falters is in its understanding of that moment.
Netflix hails this as the first TV show to star Robert De Niro and they get their money’s worth. De Niro is front and center from the opening shot. He is former President George Mullen, an extremely popular figure who left the White House after a single term. Mullen is the centrist-ideal of a president, a man so pragmatic that you have no clue what his actual values are or if they even exist without poll numbers attached. He soon becomes embroiled in a conspiracy involving the titular cyberattack that causes mass chaos and untold deaths. Oh, and he also appears to be experiencing signs of dementia.
Zero Day is a show with many faults. The biggest thing holding it back is how desperate it is to say something about our current political climate despite having nothing of value to add. It wants to believe that a former president can simply give a speech to a crowd of angry onlookers and rally them to his cause. That this same character agrees to help with what is basically a new version of the Patriot Act doesn’t seem to be treated as a betrayal by the writers. He is a good man, we’re told, so it’s okay if we entrust him with untold power.
Almost everyone we encounter in the show agrees. Most characters can’t go a few minutes without reminding us how great of a man Mullen is. The only people who hold any ill will towards him are his daughter, who is also in Congress, and a right-wing media personality that Mullen inexplicably keeps watching.
Zero Day boasts an ensemble cast full of big names. Jesse Plemons brings as much depth as he can to Mullen’s personal aide. Lizzy Caplan has the thankless role of being the aforementioned daughter who despises her father to an almost comical degree. The likes of Connie Britton, Dan Stevens, and Angela Bassett fill the rest of the cast out, just to name a few. The problem is that despite the stacked cast, nobody outside of De Niro and occasionally Plemons, has much of anything to work with. These characters exist as roles to be filled in a story first and actual people never. Their purpose is to get you from one tedious plot twist to the next.
This is a show striving to be timely with ideas that felt more at home 20 years ago. It’s The West Wing meets 24 with all the tortured speechifying and actual torture that comes with those programs. Zero Day believes that what we all need is one strong-willed man to unite us. It’s telling that we never actually see that unity. The writers seem as confused by the current state of things as the rest of us. No wonder they seem so focused on the past.
Zero Day is currently streaming on Netflix