By the time Showtime’s The Reagans debuts, it will be fewer than two weeks out from a presidential election unlike any other, and more than three decades since the documentary’s subjects vacated the Oval Office.
Surprisingly, then, director Matt Tyrnauer spends little to no time arguing for the relevance of his four-part series, a well-trod overview of the lives of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, from Hollywood to Sacramento to the White House. “If you are not a good actor, you cannot be a good president,” journalist Lesley Stahl recalls Reagan himself saying in one of the doc’s many interviews.
It’s hardly an original sentiment; the adage “politics is show business for ugly people” had been around for decades before the Trump administration.
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