ZERO DAY – Miniseries (2025)

What better narrative device to create tension in a thriller than the unreliable narrator? Not only is a mystery afoot, but we don’t know which parts of it to believe and which parts to discard; when used to its full potential, the unreliable narrator enhances the thrilling aspects of any story. Netflix’s new miniseries Zero Day swiftly establishes its protagonist, former President George Mullen (Robert De Niro), as one such narrator.

Mullen is a retired politician with a retiree’s routine; every morning, he takes his Lipitor, gets some exercise, and receives his daily briefing while the staff make him breakfast. In his office, he keeps notebooks from every major event in his life, catalogued by date and subject. Everything seems to indicate that he’s of sound mind, but by the end of the episode, we see his psyche unravel. He can’t remember his office safe’s code, one of his notebooks is full of gibberish and repeated scribbling of the phrase “Who Killed Bambi?” (a reference to the Sex Pistols’ 1978 song, which becomes part of Mullen’s auditory hallucinations), and he doesn’t recognise a member of his staff, asking for another who retired years prior. Is dementia creeping in, or is something else wrong?

Mullen’s cognitive decline makes itself known at a critical time. After an unclaimed cyberterrorist attack dubbed ‘Zero Day’ shuts down every system in the country for a minute (resulting in thousands of deaths), the current President, Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett), asks Mullen to head a special commission to investigate the attack. Mullen is the last President to have managed to garner support from both sides of the aisle (even if his affiliation, nor that of any of the other politicians, are ever clearly stated), thus appearing as the best option, since the commission is to be granted unprecedented powers, including the right to disregard habeas corpus. The Constitution is thrown out with the bathwater to assuage the public and solve the mystery as rapidly as possible.

In the whirlwind of the Commission’s creation are a few twists full of disregarded conflicts of interest. Speaker of the House Richard Dreyer (Matthew Modine) presses Congress to establish an Oversight Committee, to which President Mullen’s Congresswoman daughter Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan) is appointed immediately. Meanwhile, Mullen hires his old aide and Alex’s on-and-off lover, Roger Carlson (Jesse Plemons), as his chief of Staff, before his wife Sheila (Joan Allen) asks his former Chief of Staff (and secret lover and baby mamma) Valerie Whitesell (Connie Britton) to come back to help her husband shoulder his new responsibilities. Time is of the essence, as a push notification informed everyone at the end of that fateful minute that “This will happen again.”

I’ll admit I thought Zero Day was setting up quite a few interesting characters and conflicts and I was excited to see how it would unfold. Visually, the series looks as one would expect a political thriller to look. The first few episodes introduce claustrophobic and vertigo-inducing sharp angles and cut-off close-ups, which create serviceable visual tension, it unfortunately quickly abandons the effect to slip into more conventional framing. It relies heavily on the Sex Pistols’ song to introduce tension as well. The song, which plays repeatedly throughout the six episodes, slowly loses any power and becomes disconnected from the story, ultimately becoming more of an annoyance (even when its origin is elucidated).

Unfortunately, the show spends so much time introducing red herrings and half-baked plot points that it forgets to bring a satisfying conclusion to most of them. The unreliable narrator aspect is disappointing and mostly unrelated to the main intrigue, and I found myself not caring as much by the end; it was a wasted opportunity to tell a different kind of story. The most compelling storyline was Roger Carlson’s, which is also woefully underdeveloped; he seems to be working both sides, dealing with shady Wall Street billionaire and political influencer, Robert Lyndon (Clark Gregg), but his ties and motivations are never fully explained. I would happily have watched a show about Carlson’s life navigating US politics and its underbelly, but the writers leave that opportunity on the table once again.

It’s De Niro’s first role on the small screen, and a stacked cast joins him. Along with the aforementioned main players, Zero Day also features Bill Camp as Jeremy Lasch, the Director of the CIA, Dan Stevens as Evan Green, an Alex-Jones-type political pundit, McKinley Belcher III as Carl Otieno, the Zero Day Commission lead investigator, and Gaby Hoffmann as Monica Kidder, a Silicon Valley tech mogul. Every character can be easily connected to a real-life counterpart, but it doesn’t go past an “I see what you did there” moment. Regrettably, the script doesn’t give this seasoned cast much to work with, even if they do give it their best. It’s a political thriller trying to seem like it knows what it’s talking about (like President Mullen, trying to seem in the know), and while it sometimes strikes true, it mostly relies on tired tropes and thin dialogue. Still, Zero Day delivers some great performances, particularly Jesse Plemons’ and Connie Britton’s.

It’s surprising considering the writers’ previous experience, both in TV and political subject matters. Eric Newman was the writer and showrunner behind the critically acclaimed series Narcos (2015-18), while former journalist Michael S. Schmidt covered the infamous Hillary Clinton emails and the Trump-Comey memo. The third writing credit goes to screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, who wrote the film Jackie (2016) and worked in news television. Instead of landing on the side of timely and relevant, Zero Day is an approximate rewriting of current American politics in a scenario that could happen, ending up just this side of laziness.

Indeed, while there’s something to be said about Zero Day’s decision to avoid labelling the characters’ political affiliations outright (even if they’re obvious if you pay any attention), it leans too much toward a false balance (or bothsidesism, colloquially). In its effort to seem nonpartisan, it takes ridiculous shortcuts and places blame somewhat equally on both sides, making eyebrow-raising comparisons. For example, the character revealed as the attack’s main perpetrator equates one side’s penchant for conspiracies and disinformation with the other’s ranting about pronouns. That seems wildly disproportionate: while one side is storming the Capitol because of supposedly stolen elections, the other is advocating for equal rights for gender diversity…? If one wished to place any kind of blame on the Democrats, one could certainly find a better comparison. In any case, make it make sense. Zero Day isn’t the groundbreaking political thriller it wants to be, but it’ll keep you busy for a lazy Sunday binge session.

USA | 2025 | 6 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Noah Oppenheim, Eric Newman, Michael Schmidt, Roberto Patino, Eli Attie & Dee Johnson.
director: Lesli Linka Glatter.
starring: Robert De Niro, Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons, Joan Allen, Connie Britton, Bill Camp, Dan Stevens, Angela Bassett, Matthew Modine, McKinley Belcher III, Clark Gregg, Gaby Hoffman, Mark Ivanir, Mozhan Navabi & Hannah Gross.