‘Gaslit’ Torments Julia Roberts in a Watergate Morality Tale: TV Review
variety.comDaniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe first problem for Starz’s new series “Gaslit” may be in its title.Sure, to “gaslight,” as a verb, has its origins in the 1944 film (and its earlier stage source material), all about a woman whose husband, insistent on his falsehoods, leads her to question her sanity.
But its contemporary usage, as a slang term with a meaning that has drifted closer to simply “lying,” might not be how a woman in the 1970s would understand a case of marital dishonesty.Which is not to say that Martha Mitchell, the character Julia Roberts plays here, doesn’t have a keen understanding of just what she’s up against.
Martha, the real-life wife of Richard Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell, is depicted by Roberts as at once puckishly witty and as not immune to dramatizing her already dramatic circumstances. “Gaslit,” which takes a broad view of the political players in the Watergate scandal but keeps returning to the Mitchells, depicts a marriage that has already come apart.
All that’s left for John and Martha to do is torment one another – she taking her revenge by disclosing what she knows of the administration’s crimes to friends in the media, he by, well, gaslighting her, if that’s the term.
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