'Brendan Gleeson is by far the best part of it': Pat Fitzpatrick's TV review of The Comey Rule
Donald Trump as portrayed by Brendan Gleeson in The Comey Rule.
Don’t watch the first episode of (Sky Atlantic and Sky Now.) It feel like a bizarre TV movie from the 1980s aimed at people slow on the uptake. (Or Donald Trump voters, if you’re that way inclined.) It even has a sex scene you could watch with your kids. It’s that bad.
All you need to know is that in the run-up to the 2016 election in the US, the Director of the FBI, James Comey, investigated Hilary Clinton for using an unsecured mail server while serving as Secretary of State. The FBI first found there was no case to prosecute, then reopened the case when they got further evidence, before again announcing there was no wrong-doing, a few days before the election. Trump won and James Comey was accused by virtually everyone of making a balls of it.
This brings us up to the second episode of The Comey Rule. Enter Brendan Gleeson as Donald Trump, and the show goes from 6 out of 10 to 9 out of 10. The set-piece meetings between Gleeson’s Trump and Comey, played by an engagingly moon-faced Jeff Daniels, are superb . Trump flatters and cajoles and threatens like a mobster boss, trying to find out if Comey is going to pursue the rumours that his election was hand-crafted by Russia. (This was represented in episode-one by two Russian goons drinking vodka by a fountain in Washington. Seriously, steer clear of episode-one.)
Comey tries to insult Trump, so he won’t have to go to the Oval Office for any more meetings, by pointing out that the President has the same curtains as Bill Clinton. Trump grants Comey his no-more-meetings wish by firing him from the FBI. There is no shame in this, Trump fires one person a week, it’s like he still thinks that he is on The Apprentice. (Has anyone looked into this actual possibility, it would explain a lot.)
Anyway, Brendan Gleeson. A lot of the pre-publicity for the show in Ireland mentioned Gleeson, suggesting that we’ll watch anything with an Irish actor in it, which is of course true. But Brendan Gleeson is by far the best part of The Comey Rule. His trick is to underplay Trump — in fact, the real Trump is a slightly heightened version of Gleeson’s take on him. This gives him real menace. Have a look for yourself, in episode-two.
