The parallels between our present-day reality and the Netflix political thriller series “Zero Day” are major and many.
In this dense and talky but dramatically satisfying six-parter from creators Eric Newman (“Griselda,” “Narcos”) and Noah Oppenheim (the former president of NBC News), tensions run high between the United States and Russia after a devastating cyberattack on America. An eccentric and controversial tech billionaire is becoming more and more politically active, conservatives and liberals have never been further apart, and a charismatic and bombastic conspiracy theorist is fueling the fires of divisiveness on his wildly popular TV show. Oh, and the government has given itself unprecedented powers to cast your liberties aside in the name of pursuing justice.
It’s all fictional, but much of it feels chillingly possible.
One of the great pluses in “Zero Day” is the presence of the great Robert De Niro, who still has a mesmerizing and singularly powerful capacity to carry a project from kickoff to conclusion. This is the first starring TV series role for the 81-year-old De Niro — he was brilliant as Bernie Madoff in the 2017 HBO movie “The Wizard of Lies,” but he’s never done a multi-episode TV arc before — and it’s Emmy-level work.
De Niro plays the well-respected former President George Mullen, who spends his days going for morning runs on his property (he’s a little obsessed with a bird feeder that always needs refilling), reading the papers over breakfast and doing everything he can to avoid completing his memoir, though his shelves are stacked with handwritten notebooks.
There’s a little bit of Clinton dynamic to George’s relationship with his wife Sheila (Joan Allen, who was so memorable as a vice-presidential appointee in “The Contender” back in 2000), who had her own career in law before setting it aside to raise a family, but is now a nominee to the federal bench. You get the sense that while George and Sheila have a warm and strong union, they’ve been through some things, and there’s just a little veneer of frost that surfaces once in a while.
After a nationwide cyberattack results in thousands of casualties and infrastructural damage — a cataclysmic event dubbed “Zero Day” — Angela Bassett’s President Evelyn Mitchell, a savvy tactician, calls on George to head the Zero Day Commission, which will be tasked with investigating the attack and sussing out how to keep it from happening again. A number of key players are introduced to the mix, and it’ll be challenge for any series this year to come up with a more impressive cast.
Jesse Plemons plays Roger Carlson, a cunning fixer who was one of the few staffers to remain fiercely devoted to Roger after Roger declined to run for re-election due to personal concerns, while Plemons’ former “Friday Night Lights” castmate Connie Britton is Valerie Whitesell, who was Mullen’s chief of staff and has returned to his side at the urging of George’s wife Sheila, who is worried about George’s state of mind after a couple of alarming incidents, including George having conversations with a house manager who isn’t there and hasn’t been on the job since retiring five years earlier.
Lizzy Caplan plays Alexandra Mullen, a rising young congresswoman from New York who hasn’t been close with her father in years and has a very different political outlook, while Matthew Modine is the publicity-hungry Speaker of the House, and Bill Camp pops in to casually swipe every scene he’s in as the CIA Director Jeremy Lasch, who always seems to be lurking in the shadows and warns George that the future of the country is hanging in the balance.
Add to that Dan Stevens as the incendiary TV host Evan Green, Gaby Hoffman as a Silicon Valley billionaire and Clark Gregg as a serpentine corporate raider, and you’ve got a series brimming with intriguing and complex characters. (The twists and reveals in “Zero Day” are many, and while some are melodramatic and soapy and rather predictable, there’s never a dull moment.)
There’s also a “Manchurian Candidate” element to the proceedings, with “Who Killed Bambi”? by the Sex Pistols becoming a hair-raising needle drop, and we’ll say no more about that.
It almost feels as if we’re racing to the finish line in the finale, with certain plot points and characters getting tied up in too-convenient fashion, and some questions still hovering over the proceedings as we fade to black. Still, “Zero Day” is a timely and thought-provoking slice of alternate political reality, with the great De Niro in commanding form.