"The West Wing Documentary Special" is a 42-minute documentary from 2002 that makes a connection between the television hit series "The West Wing" and actual American politics. It is basically a mix of recycled material from the show and interviews with people who to some extent may have been the real life equivalents of Allison Janney's and other characters from the series and yes this includes (former) American Presidents as well. It is probably easy to convince them to be a part of this looking at how great of a success this show was and how much people still appreciate it so much later. But ultimately it was an underwhelming watch unfortunately. Like I said the recycled material won't impress any WW fan and the interviewees had surprisingly little interesting to say given what they could have told and with that I don't mean I want them to spill any secrets or anything. But it really felt like uninspired standard procedure. I don't believe the Emmy win was deserving and as director Bill Couturié already won an Oscar earlier in his career, I am very underwhelmed by the outcome here. Like I wrote in the title of my review, the actual show is considerably better than this documentary here. Better watch a real episode instead.
The West Wing Documentary Special
(2002 TV Movie)
Nowhere near the level of the show
1 August 2017
Warning: Spoilers