‘White House Plumbers’ a second-rate series about a third-rate burglary

In “The White House Plumbers,” G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux, left) and E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) plot a break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. (HBO)

The Watergate scandal has been told from many viewpoints. The 1995 film “Nixon” focused on Anthony Hopkins’ titular character. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were the focus of the seminal journalism procedural “All the President’s Men” (1972). John Dean’s memoir got the TV miniseries treatment in 1979’s “Blind Ambition.” And even Margaret Mitchell had her day in the sun in the Julia Roberts-starring “Gaslit” just last year.

Many of these projects featured characterizations of Watergate architects E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. Ed Harris (“Nixon”), Daniel Jenkins (“The Irishman”) and J.C. MacKenzie (“Gaslit”) have played Hunt, the arch-conservative former CIA officer, and William Daniels (“Blind Ambition”), John Diehl (“Nixon”), Robert Conrad (“Will”) and Shea Whigham (“Gaslit”) have played Liddy, the grandstanding former FBI agent who famously would hold his hand over a candle until the flesh burned to prove his loyalty and his nuttiness.