Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck's HBO miniseries "White House Plumbers" is a tonally audacious, behind-the-bungling tale of the men who botched the Watergate break-in and set in motion the demise of Richard M. Nixon's presidency. The series is focused on the two "masterminds" of the errant operation: E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Paul Theroux). The five-episode series, directed by David Mandel (the former showrunner of "Veep"), is both broadly comedic and bruisingly tragic, as it must be.

What these men and their inept coconspirators carried out is easily the most egregious own-goal in the history of American politics. Nixon was riding high in the polls against his liberal 1972 opponent, Senator George McGovern of North Dakota, when they pushed through a plot to infiltrate the DNC headquarters housed at the sprawling Watergate complex in Washington D.C. After four failed missions, the group finally breached the office,...