It’s always political: The Hollywood movies and TV shows that reflect the White House mood

We all understand the value of escapist TV and movies, art that takes us away from all the stresses of day-to-day life and also blocks out the tumult of the wider, game-changing political and social shifts in the world.

Sometimes, you just want to hibernate.

But other times, your brain is whirring fast and you’re so engaged with the news of the day, voraciously reading and watching everything, trying to make sense of it all but it can start to sound like white noise.

This is why political thrillers have always occupied this middle ground in between. It reflects the moment and in fiction, you can discover the truth.

Storytellers in Hollywood are often in lock-step with the political climate, which is kind of remarkable when you consider it takes at least two years to get a production from pitch to release.

If you look back at the history of political stories, you can almost always discern what was going on in the world at the time they were made.

Frank Capra’s Mr Smith Goes to Washington may have been based on a story that was loosely inspired by a corruption scandal from the 1920s, but by the time Capra’s film was released in 1939, it was coming at a febrile time in global affairs.

Nazi Germany had just invaded Poland two months earlier but fascism had been on the march in Europe for years. What better moment then for a film that, ultimately, reinforces the power of American democratic ideals in unearthing and meeting the challenge of corruption?

Mr Smith Goes to Washington may have accepted a government system that was not immune to malign forces but it believed in the redemptive powers of one man to hold them to account.

In the early 1970s, the American public was exhausted from the Vietnam War, still reeling from the political assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and John F and Robert Kennedy, and were about to have their faith in institutions rocked by the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

In the years that followed, Hollywood leaned into the national mood and released some of the most iconic paranoid conspiracy thrillers. Three Days of the Condor dropped in 1975, The Parallax View (1974), The Conversation (1974), Chinatown (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976).

By the 1990s, the mood was more optimistic and presidents were heroes in Air Force One and Independence Day.

But Bill Clinton’s sex scandals, which started during his campaign, well before Monica Lewinsky, still reverberated. The political movies of that era were more comedic and satirical – Primary Colours (1998), Dick (1999), Dave (1994) and Election (1999).

Wag the Dog (1997) had almost clairvoyant-esque timing, released one month before the Lewinsky scandal broke. The movie features a fake war designed to distract from a presidential sex scandal.

Famously, The West Wing, which premiered at the end of the Clinton years was considered to be a progressive wish-fulfilment of what a principled, sex scandal-free Democratic president could’ve been.

The earth-shattering realignment of September 11 gave way to a slew of political thrillers including Homeland, Battlestar Galactica, 24 and V for Vendetta, trying to grapple with the philosophical questions of how do you meet that moment when your basest instincts are crying out for revenge.

On the big screen, the Middle East featured heavily in the likes of Syriana, The Hurt Locker, Fair Game, The Mauritanian, Zero Dark Thirty and The Report.

The increasing use of drone warfare and its ethics were explored in Eye in the Sky and the most recent season of Vigil.

Given the great political shifts of the past decade, what does our current political thrillers say about this moment?

The most recent season of The Diplomat (spoilers ahead) may have thrown up all kinds of bells and whistles with bombings, conspiracies and he-did-it-he-didn’t-do-it-oops-we-did-it.

But what it was really getting at is we live in a world where the survival of western democracies are increasingly tenuous as autocratic regimes with little regard for international law are emboldened. Sound familiar?

As Donald Trump neared the end of his first term, the TV adaptation of The Plot Against America used a story about an alternative history in which the isolationist and anti-Semitic Charles Lindberg became president, to comment on the-then and soon-to-be again president.

Conspiracy thrillers are still afoot (Designated Survivor, Scandal, The Night Agent) but now the rules of war have changed.

Sometimes it’s unknown, sometimes non-state actors, with cyberattacks one of the terrifying visions of, well, not even the future. There were the British series The Undeclared War and Cobra, both of which deal with a form of warfare that doesn’t involve a shot fired.

That’s also the basis for Netflix’s upcoming six-episode series Zero Day, which has a stacked cast including Robert De Niro, Joan Allen, Connie Britton, Angela Bassett, Jesse Plemons, Lizzy Caplan and Matthew Modine.

The logline describes it as set in the aftermath of a devastating cyberattack which kills thousands of people as a former US president, a respected one, is appointed to head a commission tasked with unearthing those responsible.

It’s not such a simple task as, “disinformation runs rampant and the personal ambition of power brokers in technology, Wall Street and government collide”. The nexus of big tech, corporate titans and disinformation couldn’t be more relevant in 2024.

If Zero Day - due to be released next February - reflects now, what will the next decade of political TV shows and movies look like? At the very least, a mild anxiety attack.