By The first trailer for Showtime's glossy Russia investigation drama The Comey Rule is here, and the first proper preview of Brendan Gleeson's interpretation of Donald Trump.
So far all we'd had to go on was Gleeson's (admittedly very convincing) Trump neck wattle in profile. Now we've got nearly everything: the voice, the walk, the impetuous handshake-cum-power-yank, the Wotsit-dust complexion.
"I know some people at the bureau have it in for me," Trump says. "But I'm the president now."
The voice is very, very, very nearly there. It feels a bit odd hearing it when you know the original so well, and there's a little more rasp to it than you're used to expecting, a little more dramatic huskiness. We've not seen the full face of Trump as yet, though. There are a couple of hints, as in the picture above and a moment when Trump leans in to whisper in Comey's ear.
Hopefully that will prove to be for dramatic effect rather than just because Gleeson looks nowt like him.
"Nobody gets treated as unfairly as I do," Trump husks at Comey over dinner. "I need loyalty."
Comey's played by Jeff Daniels, and judging by how worried his former FBI director looks he's apparently chosen to revive his Speed character Harry Travers – Keanu Reeves' perpetually worried and deskbound partner, sadly exploded in his prime – for this one.
What to make of that voice though? It's somewhere between the wheezing menace of Marlon Brando's Don Corleone from The Godfather and Christian Bale's less intelligible moments as Batman.
"Really looking forward to working with you," Trump growls to Comey. "Let's take a pictuuuurrgghhhhhh."
Obviously, the most staggering and fundamental scandal to hit the basis of American democracy since Richard Nixon's friends engaged in a little bit of light larceny needs a bit of gravitas. If Gleeson was doing something more literally close to Trump, it'd be a lot harder to take seriously, which would rather undermine the whole thing of Trump as a malevolent gangster.
All presidents get their cinematic and televisual shorthand. Lincoln is booming and morally robust. JFK is, err ah, very, err ah, smooth and, err ah, chaaaaahming in his east coast blue blood way. Nixon has a gigantic prosthetic nose.
This is an early pointer to the way that Trump may come to congeal in the handbook. Rather than being the near-comic blowhard and petulant, thin-skinned child he's repeatedly shown himself to be, he'll be a creaking, croaking, whispering Emperor Palpatine type, pulling strings. It'll make for better films, but might give him too much credit.
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